OTB Football
LOI LATE NIGHT | ‘Galway must hate the sight of Shamrock Rovers!’ | A busy night in the League of Ireland
08 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Football on Off The Ball. There was an ad for four tickets to the final at a cost of $2.3 million each. $2.3 million each for a ticket to the final, yeah.
Join in the obsession. Subscribe now at offtheball.com forward slash join. Off The Ball, GAA.
Folks, hello and welcome to tonight's late night league of Ireland with myself, Shane Keegan and Mr. Barry Baz Murphy. Barry, how are you keeping?
Not too bad, Shane. How's things?
All good, all good. I'll give a quick rundown of the scores, Bar, before we get straight into the meaty stuff. Really exciting night across the league. We're in across both divisions. I think we had 14 goals in the Premier Division and 14 goals in the First Division. So lots of really good talking points. Premier Division, we had a big win for Drogheda United. 1-0 victory at home to Derry City.
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Chapter 2: What were the highlights from the League of Ireland matches this week?
Equally a big win for Bohemians, badly needed.
their current run of form 3-1 victory away to Dundalk again that seemed to swing on a red card Shamrock Rovers going west over to Galway and picking up a comprehensive 3-1 win over there the only Premier Division stalemate of the night was Shelburne 0 Sligo Rovers 0 and again another comprehensive win I suppose with St Pats who did of course go 1-0 down but roared back to win their game against Waterford 4-1
In the first division, our only other stalemate of the night at downtown at home to Treaty United was a nil-all draw. Bray Wanderers with a walloping 5-1 win over Cove Ramblers in the hunt for the promotion playoff spots. Cork City, a badly needed win, quelling the discontent down at Turner's Cross with a 3-1 win over their title contenders, I suppose it's fair to call them in UCD.
Finn Harps with a late, late show. A 1-0 win, picking up a goal in the 94th minute at home to Kerry. And a big win for Longford Town, who all of a sudden are looking like playoff contenders. A 2-1 win away to Wexford, a result they will be absolutely delighted with. So much going on, very hard to know where to start. The agenda will be set by yourselves as the callers.
I see a couple of requests in already. Let me just touch base with Barr first and see where his eyes were tonight.
Yeah, Shane, I chose the wrong one. I was all eyes on Talcott Park, unfortunately. It's always the way, isn't it? It is, isn't it? And I stuck with it as well. I wanted to flick around and see the goals, but I was expecting goals in Talcott Park and they just never came. And to be fair, as Neil Alls go, it was actually quite entertaining, but I think hugely frustrating as well, Shane.
Charles played some good stuff up until the final third but yeah just so blunt up top Ward was excellent he's a joy to watch every week but he was the only one really doing anything in the game trying to break that slug of defence down and You just look at the way Sly got set up and you're thinking, John Martin on your own up again.
Are we going to see the same stuff we see week in, week out at Talcott Park? An isolated centre forward. We just saw that. He had some good chances and it took really until Ali Koo came on after about 20 minutes. Jack Henry-Francis came off injured and Koot had two great chances in the first two minutes of being on.
just so hard to break Sligo down McEwen and Manus just in that two in front of the back four and it just looked like Charles needed to take Lunny off they kind of played with Lunny and Kerr in the middle as well and it just felt like he needed to go to a 4-4-2 set up the way to play away from home and try and get goals that way they just didn't do it
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Chapter 3: How did Shamrock Rovers perform against Galway?
And ultimately, Sligo deserved the point in the end.
Yeah, and look, I suppose from the encouraging side of things, it's their first clean sheet in seven bars. So it is surprising. Surprise, surprise, who was their last clean sheet against? It was against Tiger Overs, sort of gone seven games in between. So, look, that was badly needed to restore some sort of defensive confidence.
What a pity for them that they, you know, on the one night they do get it right defensively, that they weren't able to offer something a little bit more from an attacking threat by the sounds of things. It's hard to get that balance right for them, clearly.
Yeah, it is. It's just when you look at the away form and the away performances, it's night and day when they come back to Talcott Park, when the onus is on them to go and get after teams. You'd nearly love to see them set up and the way they played against Bowes, the kind of counter-attacking thing at home, just to try and force a result. They still haven't got a win at home.
It's an incredible run, really. But tonight, if they get that late winner, you think, listen, the performance was there, just the goals weren't there. Can you hear me?
Yeah, can you hear me all right? Not sure if everybody else can still hear me, but we'll give it a try here because our guests are lining up. So I'm going to try and get one or two of you guys in. I'll start with Anthony, who was the first person I saw logging in as a potential speaker. Can you hear me, Anthony?
I can, Shane. How are you, Shane? How are you, Barry?
Can you hear me, Anthony?
Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me, brother? Hello? I can hear you, Anthony. How's it going, Shane?
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Chapter 4: What were the significant results in the Premier Division?
Now where we are, the gremlins kicking in I wonder. Simon back in base, let me know if you can still hear me talking on WhatsApp. Yeah, you're the only one that I can hear. Okay, we'll try another one. I'm not sure what's up with Anthony. I see an old friend of mine there, Ed Saul as well. Let's see if I can get Ed in and we can have a chat about Galway and Charlie Rovers possibly.
Ed, can you hear me?
Chapter 5: What challenges do teams face in the First Division?
No. Hello? Anthony, Ed, Baz.
Yeah, Shane, we can hear you. Can you hear us?
Yeah, we can hear you, Shane. How are you doing? His headset's not working.
Chapter 6: What are the implications of Drogheda United's recent victory?
Keep trying. Keep the approve button here until somebody's able to speak to me. Wait till we try Mark. Marty, can you hear me? I can hear you, Shane. Can you hear me? Hello? Ah, Stephen is now telling me everybody can hear you. Yeah, I can hear you. I'll show up and see if I can log myself out. Shane's having a nightmare.
Chapter 7: How did Cork City manage to secure a much-needed win?
I'll go back to Anthony. Anthony, do I have to ask what you're watching tonight?
Yeah, I was watching bars. I wasn't down there. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll have it like Sky Sports and all the fans will be on together. Would that be a bit of a cracker, Baz? What do you think?
we get Wayne Rooney and Paul Scholes and Carragher on as well yeah I'll tell you what it wasn't a great first half at all at all Dundalk were Dundalk were in second gear and he went ahead he got a great goal your man Thurman scored an absolute screamer outside of the boot edge of the box came in your man Ruby does anyone else see what I'm seeing with him he is definitely
He's definitely the best striker in the league at the minute. Even when they were down to 10 men and Bows were dropping off in the last 10, 15 minutes, he was dropping into the middle, getting the ball, going on the half turn, dropping the shoulder and spraying balls out wide. And the Bows lads didn't know what they were up against.
And the only difficulty was that he wasn't in the box then to receive the ball. But he is different gravy altogether. He really impressed me. All season, if a team needs to go and challenge Shamrock Rovers for the league this year, they need to go out and get him in the window. But leaving that aside, let's talk about the first half. The balls were terrible.
They really struggled to get into the game. They were second to every ball. What I seen was...
Dundalk had a box midfield they set the traps they let Hickey have the ball Kane Bourne came in centre half he was good tonight but they closed him down and they let Hickey have the ball which I think is a problem now for Bows because his distribution isn't good enough teams are noticing that now Dundalk's Dundalk box midfield so he had to go long so I'd say
all of Hickey's balls were into Whelan's feet it was isolated on his own the poor chap hadn't got an out ball then because the midfield was congested and Dundalk just broke they just closed down but as that always happens then in the second half Bowers made a couple of changes like bringing Diallo and Power on is huge like you're talking about percentages in this game in every single league there tonight or in every single game there tonight and you're seeing the likes of
The likes of Diallo and Power coming on at half-time there, it makes a huge difference to a team when you have players that can just give you that extra one and two percents. And that's what happened. Balls got in and they just looked like they're supposed to look every week.
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Chapter 8: What are the fans' reactions to their team's performances?
With the talent that they have, they just looked like they meant it. simple stuff around the box the clearances were falling to the Bowers players because they had two up front when they brought James Taylor on as well Rossi got us back in the game and then Dundalk were all over the place they got four or five yellow cards they were trying to stop the game it wasn't it's not
what you associate Dundalk with this year. They're not that sort of team. They're a nice team that are very direct and they look good. But just for that period, that 20-minute period, after Bowers got the equaliser, just threw the game up. Yeah, so from a Dundalk perspective, that's what killed them. It was like they were given...
without playing at their full potential they were 1-0 up and then all of a sudden they were 2-1 down the penalty so basically Tierney turned on he played a quick one too we ran him behind he left Carmel for dead Carmel puts out his hand the usual looks very harsh in the grey scheme of things but it is the rules if it was against me I'd be very disappointed because literally he just runs off and Carmel puts one hand out he does be
He does look like he pushes him, but I'd say six out of ten times that the referee waves the game on because the ball's in the goalkeeper's hands. But this time, he gets it. He probably does him a favour in the sense that he sends him straight off because he was already booked. So if he gives him two yellow cards... If he's wrong on the decision, it'll get overturned, do you know what I mean?
So he probably, he sends him straight off because he's the last man, but he probably does him a favour in that sense because he's going off the pitch either way. After that then, Bows dropped in. It wasn't as comfortable as the scoreline suggests.
There was two or three, like I said about Rubio, coming back in the middle and trying to spray the ball around and Bows were really on the back foot and then he just broke away and got the goal.
But I suppose the real talking point, Baz, for me was that when Diallo came on and sat in there in the six and released Turney and Devoy up to the areas of the pitch where we want to see them, those were a different team. A completely different team.
It's funny how at the ground Diallo can cover in there when he's sitting beside Devoy as well. It's almost like having two sixes in there. He's such a pivotal role when he comes on. He was excellent the last game he played as well. He was. Wasn't he? It's funny. Again, going away from home.
set up slightly different just looking I haven't seen the game but just looking at the formations it looks like they set up slightly different as well like coming home against Rada now on Friday what way do you see them setting up yeah
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