Shelbourne 1 UCD 1
If a team's strength can really be best judged by the quality of those forced to start games on the bench then UCD manager Pete Mahon had considerable cause for alarm at Tolka Park last night.
Shelbourne started their first game of the new campaign with five former youth internationals for substitutes while the visiting manager could call upon, well, five youths, current or former, if the going got tough.
If the newly promoted students travelled across the city for this game as underdogs, however, they were clearly unconcerned by the tag. Through all but the very opening exchanges they largely held their own and after Damien Dupuy gave them an unexpected 63rd-minute lead with a flicked header from a Mick O'Donnell corner, the visitors were unlucky to concede an equaliser five minutes from time.
That goal came courtesy of Stuart Byrne who scored from the penalty spot after Conor Kenna had been, perhaps a little harshly, adjudged to have taken down Glen Crowe just inside the area.
Shelbourne often benefited last season from their ability to play at a pace their opponents found difficult to match in the latter stages of games and Pat Fenlon observed this week that the club's various new arrivals had helped to up the tempo.
Sure enough, with four debutants included in the starting line- up the defending champions looked, early on, to be targeting some sort of land-speed records with the likes of Alan Moore, Ollie Cahill and Bobby Ryan all looking impressively impatient to get into the last third of the pitch.
For a while the students looked suitably rattled but gradually they got to grips with the home side's rather frantic approach.
They were helped by the fact that for all the more celebrated side's determination to break their defence down, Shelbourne's passing was generally haphazard with the movement of players like Ryan, Crowe and Gary O'Neill apparently causing their new team-mates almost as many problems as it did Kenna, Brian Shortall and Alan McNally.
Shortall was particularly impressive, calmly intervening on the couple of occasions that either of the home team's new strikers threatened to get on the end of a through-ball from midfield and coolly linked up with his midfield when it might have been tempting to think in terms of further upfield when it came to relieving the pressure.
UCD, as ever, look a little short of the sort of physical attributes required for the route-one approach but they did have as willing a runner up front as any side is likely to produce this season in Damien Dupuy.
Signed during the winter from Galway, where he scored 15 goals last season, the young striker looked to chase down everything that moved although Colin Hawkins and Jamie Harris had, that one set-piece aside, a largely comfortable evening.
So too did Darren Quigley at the other end, though, with an Owen Heary glancing header that clipped the top of the crossbar the closest the home side came to beating the goalkeeper over the first hour of the game.
After his side had shaken their hosts up by taking the lead the goalkeeper's workload increased noticeably but he continued to cope well, coming off his line to block down a Heary effort,looking composed in the air and beating Crowe to a fine through-ball from Moore only to take a kick to the head for which the striker was booked.
Shelbourne, predictably in the circumstances, managed a late surge but not even the quality of their three replacements could help them to a winner.
SHELBOURNE:Williams; Heary, Harris, Hawkins, Rogers; Ryan (Cawley, 87 mins), S Byrne, Moore, Cahill (Baker, 72 mins); Crowe, O'Neill (Hoolahan, 62 mins).
UCD:Quigley; Mahon, McNally, Shortall, Kenna; McWalter, Hurley (Kierans, 11 mins), Dicker, O'Donnell; Martin (Foley, 91 mins), Dupuy (Murphy, 68 mins).
Referee:P Tuite (Dublin).
