Brennan thrilled with season start

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With an impressive start to the league campaign, UCD stopper Billy Brennan has made the number one shirt his own this season with eight clean sheets already racked up.

Originally from Moneenroe, Co.Kilkenny, from a hurling background, Brennan grew up playing intermediate football for his local club, before moving on to play for UCD through the scholarship scheme.

After beating St Patrick's Athletic on Monday night, Brennan said that he is relishing the challenge of playing in the top flight and warned that The Students must keep up their recent good form.

"It was a great win on Monday, well deserved. Two great results for us this week, particularly in the last few minutes of each game when both teams threw everything at us," Brennan told Extratime.

"We showed how well we can defend, and hopefully we can do that again and get another positive result against Bray this Friday."

To be able to hold out is a sign of mental toughness and Brennan says that they have learned a lot since their defeat at the hands of St. Pat's earlier in the season.

"It is. To be fair to St. Pat's, we learned a lot from the game at the start of the season, when they beat us three nil. We have worked on a lot of things since then and the coaching staff have been excellent," he said.

"We are not getting carried away here. It's a positive result, it could of gone either way. I think we shaded the first half, they probably shaded the second, but we took our chance."

With eight clean sheets in 11 games, the Kilkenny native is delighted with his recent form. But he knows that it takes a team effort to pick up points in the Premier Division.

"Yeah, it's a good record. Records don't count for much at the end of the season though. If we don't keep another clean sheet for the rest of the season, they won't be looked back on," said Brennan.

"We will take it forward and get another one next week. I think clean sheets breath confidence, we spoke about it in the dressing room, everybody has important roles to do off the ball and we work on it a lot."