McDonnell pleased with mean Shels defence

SHELBOURNE have started the season brightly and after six games the Tolka side find themselves unbeaten and at the summit of the First Division. Last Friday Shelbourne won away in Galway and speaking to Extratime.ie, manager Johnny McDonnell was happy with another clean sheet and with the start to the season his side have had.

“It’s been a decent start for us in fairness.

“They [Galway] probably felt they had a few chances but they had no real ‘one on one’ chances. I was happy out with the way we defended.”

The league leaders also have one of the meanest defences so far in the league this season, conceding in only 2 matches, and the former Faroe Islands assistant manager feels it is a collective effort that has helped them be so stingy at the back.

“It's obviously a team effort and I'm not being clichéd about it but it's genuinely a team effort. We defend from the front all the way to the goalkeeper. I wouldn't particularly pick someone out; I'd say we work well as a team”

Another feature of Shelbourne’s season so far has been their passing style and McDonnell stresses that this is something his team works hard on rather than it coming naturally for his talented players.

 “Well I'd hope it just doesn't happen, we obviously work at it. We looked at the selection of players that we could get and we felt that we had a team that could pass the ball. We don't have the biggest physical team in the world. As you rightly said, if we can get the ball and pass it and keep it, we can work the other teams. We work particularly hard at our possession games in training.”

Keeping it tight at the back and playing good passing football is definitely the Shelbourne way this season, but you have to score goals as well and the Reds have seen half of their goals come in the last ten minutes – something we asked McDonnell about.

“I think there are a couple of factors to it. We have the ability to counter attack and obviously late on in games we have a bit of speed up the flanks. I do think the overall general fitness and the training regime over the pre-season has gone well. If we can keep the ball and work the other teams, it's obviously having an effect later on.”

Friday night brings to a completion the first round of games in the First Division as Shels welcome Cobh Ramblers to Tolka Park. The Cork side are without a win this season, but the former St Patrick’s Athletic manager isn’t taking them for granted.

“It would be very unprofessional of me and the players to do that, whether it's Cobh or anyone [else]. I think the players know that we must play to very high standards, physically and mentally to get a result off any team in this league.

“They have a young team and they won the 19's cup down there. They obviously haven't had a great start to the season, conceding a few goals.  They got a great result last week against Waterford. That tells me that they are starting to put things right. The only thing we can do is be on our guard on Friday in relation to whatever Cobh put up to us.”

If Shelbourne are to win all three points, they may have to do it without the services of Conor Murphy and Jordan Keegan who were withdrawn against Galway last week.

“We'll train and assess them before the game. Conor's hamstring might be a little bit of a worry. We can work players around, we have a big enough squad, but they are two good players in the group and they'd be a big loss if we have to lose them at any stage in the season.

Coming towards the end of the first quarter of the season McDonnell feels they will know their opposition well come Saturday morning:

“We'll have a good handle on everyone. The teams are [all] taking points off one another and we've had close games. If we get the first seven out of the way and we're top of the league we'll be happy ... and we'll focus on the next seven. We'll set targets within those seven games again, realistic targets that we think we can achieve. That's kind of the way we approach the season.

“With a young team we're going to hit a patch somewhere so we've got to really be careful and have got to be ready for that patch. Because they are young, we can't be putting so much on their shoulders.”

It would be hard to talk about young players and not mention 18 year old Dylan Connolly who is Shelbourne’s current top scorer with three goals and McDonnell is happy with the progress he is making.

“I would agree he's definitely moving in the right direction. He's still only a kid and he has still a long way to go but hopefully he keeps getting the goals for us.”