The Commentary Box: Dundalk claim victory in Kerry in front of large away support

Over 500 Dundalk fans travelled to Tralee on Friday to see Dundalk take on Kerry in a top-of-the-table game in the Kingdom. It was the first time Dundalk played Kerry in a competitive game. It ended with another precious one-nil win for Dundalk.

They collected three points, from a difficult venue and were forced to play 55 minutes with ten men when Leo Gaxha was given a straight red card for a challenge on Kerry player Neil Brookwell on 35 minutes.

Gaxha could have had no complaints nor did he. It was a dangerous high-footed tackle. Up to then Dundalk totally dominated the game and could have been well ahead.

As it was they led by a single goal and were virtually under siege for the entire second half. Dundalk had chances to increase their lead in the second half as they had in the first half.

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Dundalk fans travelled by plane, coaches, trains and cars for this game. Some 50 fans nearly missed their plane when their bus broke down in Drogheda.

But they made it to the airport and did not have to worry about seeking an alternative method of travel. The team travelled down to Kerry by bus and stayed overnight on Thursday. They were fresh and ready for the big game on Friday evening.

It was played in a great atmosphere which was competitive from the off. Dundalk made one change from the team that won the opening two league games.

Their big central defender Mayowa missed the game as a result of a slight hamstring injury picked up in Ballybofey the week before. Sean McHale was brought into the team and had an outstanding game.

Once again Enda Minogue was in goals. He was outstanding and the main reason why Dundalk did not concede and got all three points. Conor O'Keefe was right full with Sean McHale and Vinny Leonard slotting in as the centre-halves.

Aodh Dervin and Harry Groome were the two central midfielders while Daryl Horgan and Leo Gaxha were on the wings.

Dean Ebbe was the lone striker with Eoin Kenny playing behind him. Dean Ebbe was replaced by Luke Mulligan on 53 minutes as Dundalk sacrificed a striker for a defender to thwart the wave of Kerry attacks into the penalty area.

Sean McHale moved to the centre-half position while Luke Mulligan moved to right full. Andy Paraschiv replaced Harry Groome on 69 minutes. Gbemi Arubi replaced Eoin Kenny also on 69 minutes while Daryl Horgan was replaced by Keith Ward on 89 minutes.

Dundalk were the better team in the first half and had early efforts from Sean McHale and Daryl Horgan which were both off target. Dundalk finally got the breakthrough on 25 minutes when Daryl Horgan and Dean Ebbe combined so well in a fantastic one-two movement.

Ebbe shot home well to put the early league leaders in front. It was Dean's first league goal of the season. Last year he was the leading goalscorer in the First Division. He is up and running with the goals now.

Hopefully, this will open the floodgates for him. Kerry fired a warning shot at Dundalk on the half-hour when Niall Brockwell shot narrowly over from a great corner on the right.

Kerry's left winger Daniel Okwute put in a great cross from the right. Enda Minogue rose high to gather the ball to safety. Minogue commanded his penalty area throughout the entire night. He was superb. Daniel Okwute was also superb.

He was able to get down the wings with little problem for the entire second half. Conor O'Keefe found it very difficult to deal with his threat. Luke Mulligan was later given the job to try and stop his constant crosses into the box. He was also unable to do so.

Dundalk had done very well in the first 35 minutes. As usual, they were excellent at the back. In midfield, I thought Daryl Horgan had a very good first half.

He had some great runs down the wing with his crosses causing Kerry some very difficult problems. He nearly scored himself. But the way he laid the ball off for Dean Ebbe's goal was vintage Horgan. That continued in the second half.

With Gaxha sending off, Ciaran Kilduff was always going to have to change things. But he rightfully was going to wait for a while until he saw how Kerry reacted.

Dundalk striker Eoin Kenny should have killed the game off on 39 minutes when he was put in the clear. With the goal at his mercy, his dinking effort was just narrowly wide.

Ciaran Kilduff was still playing two strikers two minutes from halftime when Eoin Kenny fired in a blistering effort that produced a great save from the Kerry keeper Timothy Oliver Hiemer.

But the first half was just coming to a close when a header from Kerry's Nathan Gleeson crashed off the Dundalk crossbar following a superb cross from Alex Dunne.

The sides went in at halftime with Dundalk leading 1-0. But they knew they were facing a huge battle in the second half as they were down to ten men.

There was only a minute gone in the second half when Kerry looked to have levelled. Daniel Okwute had a stinging effort that for once beat Enda Minogue.

Somehow Sean McHale got a boot to the ball to clear it off the line. Daniel Okwute was causing more and more problems for Dundalk. His powerful shot inside the box on the half-turn was only inches wide.

Sean McGrath went close for Kerry on 61 minutes. It was another shot from McGrath five minutes later that was saved by Minogue. Dundalk looked to have got a second goal with just 10 minutes remaining when Daryl Horgan's shot was bound for the net.

An unbelievable block from Niall Brokwell kept the Kerrymen still in the game. Right at the end of the game, there was a great cross into the Dundalk box.

The area was packed. It looked at the one stage that a Kerry boot had scored. There were no appeals from Kerry for a goal.

The ball had somehow been scrambled off the Dundalk goal line again. When the referee blew the final whistle, there was great relief among the Dundalk camp.

To a man, they went over to the 500 Dundalk supporters who had travelled so far to see their heroes and thanked them for their support. Dundalk goes three points clear at the top of the table. Next Friday they play Treaty United from Limerick who are in second place in the table.

Treaty is in many ways the surprise package of Division One this season. They led Cobh Ramblers by two goals in the opening game of the season but were beaten 3-2.

Since then they have been banging the goals in and are now in clear second place in the table. Treaty beat Finn Harps 3-1 on Friday night.

The week before they hammered Athlone Town 5-0 in Athlone, Dundalk will be without Leo Gaxha for the Treaty game. He will be suspended for getting sent off last Friday.

Mayowa may also be an injury doubt having missed Friday night's game against Kerry. But Dundalk have built a formidable defence. This is the most important foundation of any team. In Enda Minogue, he is a terrific keeper. The midfield is top-class.

In Dean Ebbe, they have a top-class striker. It was great to see Dean get on the scoresheet on Friday. Up until then, Dundalk's other two goals in the league had been scored by defenders.

Manager Ciaran Kilduff could never have imagined how good a start his Dundalk side would have made to their league campaign.

I would not be concerned at all that Dundalk have won their games by scoring just one goal in each of them. The main point is that they are not conceding.

The goals will flow. The good point for me is that they will come from players all over the park. The main point that matters is that this team has so far shown such strength in defence. They have been magnificent.

Over and over again I keep saying how good a keeper Enda Minogue is. But his back four are excellent too.

Sean Keogh is having a magnificent season at fullback as is Conor O'Keefe. Vincent Leonard has been excellent at the centre half as has Mayowa.

But Sean McHale stepped up to the plate on Friday night and was terrific. He made one, if not two magnificent goal clearances in the Kerry game that looked certain to be scores.

The way Dundalk dug so deep for 62 minutes when they were down to ten men showed the fighting spirit and quality this team has. Of course, there are only three games gone. I have seen daft comments on social media stating that Dundalk will be promoted easily.

They will not. This team like any other will lose games like their competitors. They will concede goals too. They face a long hard battle to get the results needed to top the table at the end of the season. They will be in the promotion hunt.

That is a cert. But to get automatic promotion will take a massive effort. They can do it. But it will be a massive achievement to do so.

I am struck by the determination of the players to win promotion. Anyone I have spoken to keeps saying that they want to get Dundalk back to where they should be.

They mean the Premier Division. They are well aware of the club's history. But this does not give them a God-given right to be in the top flight. From the manager to his whole squad, they know they must battle and fight hard for the automatic promotion spot.

They are bound to hit a number of bad patches in their form during the season. If they can recover positively from these, then the sky's the limit.

It's great to see Kerry playing in the League of Ireland. Kerry is a fantastic sporting county. They are the premier county for Gaelic football. They are also growing stronger and stronger in Hurling.

It's interesting to see how popular soccer is at junior and now senior levels. There has been significant investment put into Kerry FC in recent years.

They may not get promotion this year. They will, within the next two to three years. I always have a fondness for Kerry. My great grandmother was a Kerry woman.

Louth and Kerry are my two teams in GAA. Like Dundalk, Kerry has an astroturf pitch. Their pitch seems to be in a much better condition than Dundalk's.

The pitch at Oriel will have to have a new astro surface laid again next season. I really hope that the people in charge go for a grass pitch. But for now, I think they will be staying with the astro surface.

Ciarán Kilduff

Dundalk manager Ciaran Kilduff told the media on Friday that he had a feeling of relief and pride in getting the win against Kerry.

''We knew we had to simplify the game as soon as we lost Leo. We knew we had to dig in as we had the lead.

''We could have doubled that lead a few times while down to ten men. But the longer the lead remained at just a single goal, we knew what we were signing up to.

''We knew we would have to show resilience. This is what we are trying to breed into these lads. The win tonight is as sweet as any of the wins we have had this season.

''The win tonight was magnificent. To do it with ten men and seven minutes of injury time at the end of the game will contribute a lot to the development of confidence in the team.

''Add tonight's performance to what we faced in the second half against Finn Harps last week shows the great character there is in this team.

''Dean Ebbe was excellent tonight. He linked up with Daryl Horgan so well for his goal. I am delighted for Dean. He played so well until I had to change things after the sending-off.

''He had to be the sacrificial lamb as I had to strengthen things at the back. But I know that the goal Dean got tonight is just the first of many.

''Eoin Kenny is getting into the right positions for goals. That is all I want from him. The goals will start flowing from him in the near future. He is a very talented player.

''He came very close to scoring twice tonight. He had two shots that went just wide of the post and a couple of other efforts that were not far away either.

''He is such a young player with such promise. He has come through two thankless games in the past week against Kerry and against Finn Harps. I know how thankless things can be for strikers. But in both Eoin and Dean, we have the best.

''Sean McHale, Vinny Leonard and Luke Mulligan were also magnificent for us. Sean blocked a number of great attempts on goal and cleared at least one effort off the line.

''Vinny and Luke were also magnificent at the back. They are such young players. They did everything we asked of them.

''We travelled down to Kerry on Thursday. It gave us more time to prepare for the game. It also gave us extra sleep time.

''This gave us the extra energy to withstand the pressure Kerry put on us for 65 minutes after we were down to ten men.

''The supporters were magnificent tonight. We needed them so much in the second half. The emotion at the end between players and supporters was magnificent.

''To see the amount of support here was great. They came by planes, trains and automobiles. They are fantastic. I saw how good they were in the Premier Division. But look at the support here tonight. It was the longest distance the club had to travel.

''Yet they practically bought out the away end in total. We could not have ever imagined that so many would travel tonight. To the supporters, I say you all got us over the line tonight. You were the extra player, when we lost Leo. The support means so much to the players.

''Then again, I knew how good the support always was at this club. They, the supporters, are the reason why I came to Dundalk this season. I am 100 percent sure that I was right to come here when offered the manager's job. It was the supporters we have that swung my decision.''

LOITV

LOITV did not come out of Friday night's coverage in glowing terms. Most who have bought the app legally were left with no coverage for at least part of the games.

A Dundalk supporter who paid the 99 euro to see the season's games only started to get coverage after forty minutes. Yet some who are getting LOITV illegally on the fire stick or the dodgy box saw the entire game. This is just not good enough.

Why can it be seen illegally in total and yet others who have bought the app legally got very poor service? LOITV needs to get this corrected quickly. Do not get me wrong. I think 99 euros is fantastic value to be able to see a season's games.

But when the service is disrupted in the way it was on Friday, it is simply not good enough.

For the second week in a row, some supporters were unable to see a Dundalk game without some interruption. The people behind the app need to get this problem corrected as soon as possible.

League of Ireland Second Division

The FAI have received quite a number of applications from clubs for a proposed second Division of the League of Ireland.

The new Division will be split into two sections, North and South. There will be ten teams in each part, North and South as part of the new National League.

Teams will compete in their respective sections, first to qualify for playoffs, where top teams from North and South will compete for a chance to get promoted to the First Division.

The new National League will be integrated into the existing football pyramid offering a route for promotion and relegation to and from the League of Ireland. The FAI are proposing that there will be 10 teams each in the Northern and Southern sections.

There will be a shortened season from August 2026 ahead of the first full season the following year. Expressions of interest from clubs closed on the 22nd of February. The bottom team in the First Division will play off with the top team emerging from the newly proposed second Division.

The FAI are now to meet with the clubs who have shown an interest in the new set-up. The new league is seen as a clear pathway from the amateur game to the League of Ireland.

It's seen as the first step in the development of a pyramid for Irish football. The FAI say they will be working closely with all provincial associations and all existing leagues.

Who will form a corps part in the new proposal? They say they look forward to engaging with all interested clubs and entities in the new National Leagues.

I am presuming that the winners of the North and South sections will play off. The winner will play the bottom team of the First Division in a promotion relegation play-off.

I am presuming that the new playoff will come into existence from the end of season 2026. It will not affect this year's First Division. Oriel should be packed to the rafters for the game against Treaty United on Friday. Expect a very exciting game. And I predict a lot of goals.

Have a great week. Look after yourselves and each other. And most importantly, please be careful out there.