Inside Track: Dundalk well placed as the curtain rises
Inside Track with Joe Carroll
As the World Cup prepares to take the first steps in its long and winding road with the opening matches going ahead this week, Dundalk go into the second half of the Premier League well placed.
Orielites, no doubt, will take in the extravaganza being played out in America, Mexico and Canada, following their fancies – that’s if they are prepared to get up at unGodly hours to see some of the action.
Over 100 matches are to be decided over more than a month, several with a 5am kick-off.
But of greater interest to locals will be the results of the Lilies’ games over the same period and afterwards.
The league has its restart this Friday night, Ciarán Kilduff taking his charges on a trip to Galway. Then, on the following week, there’s another away game, this one with Bohemians.
The team’s mid-term report would have to read better than ‘satisfactory’. ‘Very good’, in fact.
Points were dropped early in a series of draws, and after that came defeats in games that were expected to yield wins.
But in the series leading up to the break, there were hugely encouraging performances, none better than in the defeat of league-leaders, Shamrock Rovers, when goalkeeper Enda Minogue performed heroics in the dying minutes.
Next up was a draw with Drogheda United, halting a winning run. It wasn’t one of the side’s better displays, but a point was salvaged, and that was enough to keep Kilduff’s side firmly in the top four.
As the curtain came down on the first half of the 36-round competition, Dundalk were set another poser.
The game was at home, and, yes, the visiting Derry City were under the clouds of a dismal run. Still, nothing was being taken for granted.
It ended in a 2-1 win, with captain Daryl Horgan once again turning back the clock with a superb first-half strike.
Fourth in the table, shadowing the big three, champions Rovers, St Pat’s and Bohs, and clear of the big-spending Derry, who’d been tipped in several quarters to provide the strongest challenge to Rovers – who wouldn’t have taken that before season got underway?
The sheet showing World Cup odds, many of which were quoted on this page last week, must have been printed before the England squad was named. It has Phil Foden at 40/1 to be top scorer.
As is well known by now, Phil won’t be making the trans-Atlantic trip.
He failed to get the nod from Thomas Tuchel, and like another player with Manchester after his name, Harry Maguire, will have to confine himself to watching the action on television, unlikely as he is to be donning a Three Lions rosette at wherever venue his sometime colleagues are playing.
Louth senior footballers have been closing a lot of gaps in recent times with welcome wins.
Like the one first opened in 1957 and, more recently, another in 1973. Could England follow suit by winning the World Cup for the first time in 60 years?
Inside Track won’t be laying out its hard-earned on them, especially not at odds of just 6/1.
But they’re still getting the nod, and Harry Kane might bring off the double, captaining the team and getting more goals than anyone else.