Stephen McPhail to 'look at' Richie Towell incident late in Shamrock Rovers' win over Shelbourne
Shamrock Rovers have closed the gap with Shelbourne to just two points.
Stephen McPhail has played down a show of frustration from midfielder Richie Towell, who appeared to storm down the tunnel after it was clear that he wasn’t going to come off the bench in Sunday's 2-0 win over Shelbourne.
Rovers’ final substitution of the night saw Darragh Nugent replace opening goalscorer Jack Byrne - and Towell was spotted hurling something to the ground as he made his way towards the dressing room.
Byrne opened the scoring in the first-half and Neil Farrugia doubled Rovers' lead late in the second-half against a Shels side with a patchwork defence, with full-backs Sean Gannon and Kameron Ledwidge as his centre-backs, with injuries and suspension robbing Damien Duff of seven key players, including the experienced Paddy Barrett, Shane Griffin and Aiden O’Brien.
READ MORE: Damien Duff hits back at Shamrock Rovers boss Stephen Bradley with f-word Galway rant
READ MORE:Shamrock Rovers v Shelbourne recap on a huge day in the race for the League of Ireland title
Rovers director of football McPhail, standing in for the suspended Stephen Bradley, was asked afterwards about Towell's reaction and he said: “I didn’t even notice it, someone said it to me after..
“Ah listen, players are disappointed if they don’t get on the pitch. I honestly haven’t seen it but, yeah, we need everyone.
“We’ve got a big squad with quality players so it’s difficult to make decisions and not everyone can get on the pitch at one time. We’ll have a look at it and see what it looked like.”
Sunday's derby win puts Rovers right back in the title mix, with just two points separating them and leaders Shelbourne with three games remaining.
They controlled the game from the very start and led in the 18th minute when Farrugia galloped down the left and skipped past midfielder-turned-right-back John O’Sullivan.
His low cross was finished in style at the near post by Byrne, who steered the ball high past Conor Kearns with the outside of his right boot.
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Shels battled back, however, and striker Sean Boyd forced a wonderful finger-tip save from Hoops goalkeeper Pohls with a low 25-yard strike.
Pohls came to the rescue again in the 54th minute to deny Ali Coote, who was teed up inside the area by Boyd. There were chances for Evan Caffrey and Boyd again, while Harry Wood’s volley cleared the crossbar by a matter of inches.
Farrugia settled Rovers nerves in the 86th minute when he raced onto Graham Burke’s brilliant back-heel, which nutmegged Ledwidge and took out two more defenders.
He cut in from the right and curled the ball across Kearns and inside the far post.
Reflecting on his side’s two goals, Rovers director of football Stephen McPhail, stepping in for the suspended Bradley, said: “Jack’s is a great goal, Neil sets him up, and then Graham comes on, a great bit of skill that we all know Graham has to put Neil through to give us that cushion.”
As for the title race, he added: “We’re in it, we’re bang in it, it’s difficult to say, there are probably five or six that still think they can win it.
“It’s in other people’s hands, we just need to concentrate on ourselves, three to go, we go to Drogheda in a couple of weeks’ time and we’ll prepare for that.”
He hailed goalscorer Farrugia, who only three days earlier was red carded in Rovers’ 1-1 draw with APOEL in the Europa Conference League.
“It's a crazy one, football, in a matter of days you go from one extreme to the other,” said McPhail.
“He's learned from it, I think. The second yellow, his body shape needs to be better and we spoke about it the last few days.
“I thought tonight he defended really well, it's difficult because he's probably naturally a winger, he finds himself in defending situations quite a bit but he's worked on it and has all the attributes to be a top, top wingback.
“I'm delighted for him because he had a massive down on Thursday and it's lifted him up again.”
McPhail is hopeful that Rovers’ experience, having won the last four league titles, will stand to them. But he knows they cannot rely on that.
“It's difficult to say. We've been here before chasing and been up the top and the hardest thing is to get over the line,” he said.
“Nerves always come to the fore, whatever position you're in.
“When you're at the top for so long and it's nearly there, it's nearly there… it feels like… we’ve huge experience in our dressing room and in the staff and need to understand the next game is the most important thing.
“This league campaign has been such crazy results, we can't just think we can roll up in the next three games and win, it doesn't work like that.”
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