INSIDE TRACK: Oh, Inverness, what happened to you?
I was interested to see how Inside Track’s favourite teams had fared
Someone should have warned me before I looked up the soccer results from the weekend before last. The season across the sea, and on the other side of the border, had just begun, and I was interested to see how Inside Track’s favourite teams had fared.
Not good. Accrington Stanley did alright, but Ballinamallard got turned over. As for Inverness Caledonian Thistle – well, they fell to a big defeat. It wasn’t, however, the worst loss of the weekend.
Accrington are in the English League fourth tier, which is as low as you can go. Any lower and you’d be playing non-league stuff.
Anyway, they got a 2-2 draw at home to Colchester, after leading twice. There was a crowd of almost 2,000 in attendance.
Ballinamallard somehow managed to stay in the Irish League’s First Division, which is the lowest of the low, after a disastrous 2025/’26 season.
It looks as if there’s going to be another struggle this term. Moyola Park, a name that trips of the tongue, but not a team setting northern football alight, won 2-0 at home.
That, however, was a good result when compared with Inverness’s up in Scotland. Okay, ICT were up against it on their visit to Edinburgh for a League Cup second round tie against last season’s narrow Premiership runners-up, Hearts
They were very good in the first half and well into the third quarter, leading 2-1. The wheels came off after that, but only in the last ten minutes. Hearts scored five times to win 6-2.
That, however, wasn’t the biggest defeat of the weekend.
Nearer home – indeed, right on our doorstep – Dundalk ran eight past Castlebar Celtic in the FA Cup, a result which was no doubt welcomed at Oriel after a sequence of poor league results. Could be the Celtic boys have nipped over and taken a sup too many from the Sam Maguire.
And what about the outcome of St Patrick’s joust with Shamrock Rovers? A 3-2 win for Stephen Kenny’s side, a result which is sure to put pep in the step of the eight teams still standing.
Rovers are running away with the league, leaving the others with just a spot in European football to chase in the points competition.
Now there’s a Rovers-free Cup race to be run. The quarter-finals have an all-Premier League line-up, Dundalk set to face a poser, a trip north to play an improving Derry City.