eircom National League First Division

Date	30/11/2002
Score (Blues First)	1 - 5
Venue	Morton Stadium, Santry, Dublin
Kick Off	2.00pm
Attendance	128
Weather	Windy
Referee	D. Deady (Cork)
Goal Scorers	Byrne
Cards	Yellow: Di Lella
Pitch	Very soft

Seven points clear at the top and a great chance to increase it to 10 as our nearest rivals weren't due to play until later Saturday night. Dublin City had not won in the last 5 games and the Blues were on fire. A happy day was expected in Dublin.

With a crowd of just over a hundred people, Waterford United had brought 60 fans with them, hoping to see another victory in our quest for promotion. As we sat in the stand waiting for the match to start we could not have predicted what we were about to witness. The team should have been full of confidence, and we had been playing good football and scoring goals, so how could we turn in a performance so bad. We only had one change in the team and even though Fennelly and Russell are too totally different keepers all blame could not be placed on Fennelly's shoulders. Russell never comes off his line, Fennelly does, Russell doesn't want the ball at his feet Fennelly does. This two comparisons made life difficult for the defence at the early stages as they were not used to this behind them. This is not a criticism of Russell or Fennelly its the way they play. The game was switched to Saturday, by Dublin City Waterford only found out on Wednesday of this and it was like we had our minds set for a Sunday game and forgot to turn up on Saturday. Sometimes you have a couple of players who don't perform but today we had 11. The Vikings hassled us from the start and we never managed to string three passes together for the 90 minutes. It was Brendan Markey (reject) who was causing us all sorts of problems and who would go on to score a hatrick and to make matters worst Derek McGrath (missed a penalty against Town to see us relegated) scored as well.

We were 2 down at half time and deserved to be, but a Willie Byrne goal from a set piece brought us back into the game. We were still unable to lift ourselves and conceded a third shortly afterwards and this was game over. Jimmy was reported to be ragging after the draws this season so I couldn't start to think how he was after this match. This was over worse performance by a mile.

OK so our run of 14 matches unbeaten has come to an end and we conceded 5 goals which dented our goal difference, but its over and done with. We were going to lose at some stage and also have a bad day, so we did it all in the one day. Results a few hours latter went our way again with Galway losing, Cobh and Dundalk drawing the only team who gained ground was Finn Harps. We are still 6 points clear at the top and play the Town this Thursday. A sign of a good team is when they hit back straight away with a good show and we can do this in the RSC this week.