Galway United 1

Shamrock Rovers 2

If Galway United’s unlikely push for European football ends in disappointment this season – and after Monday night, it is hard to see any other outcome – then they only have themselves to blame after some defending that was comical, but no laughing matter, gifted the visitors two goals and three points.

This was a 34th game without a win against the Hoops, a run going back 18 years – perhaps fed-up at an inability to beat Shamrock Rovers, United instead decided to beat themselves.

They’ll have complaints against the officials – there has barely been a game when that hasn’t been the case – but this was an act of self-sabotage. Yes, the officials were . . .  well, they were par for the course: well-meaning but also bumbling, missing obvious indiscretions and penalising phantom rule breaks. They don’t go out with the aim of achieving new levels of awfulness, but by God, more often than not they delivered in spades.

Both sides benefitted on Monday night. Both sides.

The penalty awarded against Dan Cleary, from which United equalised, was very harsh; and despite multiple replays, we still can’t see why Cleary’s 87th minute header across goal and inside the far post was ruled out.

But there is also a strong case that Cleary shouldn’t have been on the pitch: he picked up a yellow card for an ugly tackle from behind on Ed McCarthy late in the first-half that could have been red; and then allegedly made contact with the head of a United player in the fracas that followed. Neither referee Neil Doyle nor his assistant saw it.

United were also insistent that Johnny Kenny pushed Garry Buckley as the United defender was about to clear a ball in the 84th minute, complaining that the contact instead resulted in Buckley scoring the OG that handed Rovers the win.

That looks like a plea borne of desperation, but the simple fact is if Buckley had been stronger, or faster – Rob Slevin’s continued residency on the United bench is a strsnge one – then the hard-luck story would have been of another draw with Rovers.

Pictured: Galway United’s Stephen Walsh tries his luck with an overhead kick in the first-half of Monday night’s game. Photo: Joe O’Shaughnessy.