Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley said that Graham Burke deserves to be spoken of alongside the club’s greatest ever players after the attacker surpassed Gary Twigg in the all-time scoring charts.
Burke struck a brace of goals either side of half-time in the Hoops’ resounding 4-0 win over fellow title contenders St Patrick’s Athletic, a result which carries them five points clear at the top of the table.
The Dubliner’s double took his tally to 88 goals for Shamrock Rovers, lifting him one clear of Scottish striker Twigg, whose goals propelled the Hoops to the league title in 2010 and 2011.
It makes Burke the club’s top goalscorer in the Tallaght Stadium era, though the late Paddy Ambrose remains out in front in the all-time standings with 109 goals.
“If you go back to the very start, we got Graham back from England,” Bradley recalled, speaking to RTÉ Sport’s Tony O’Donoghue.
“We had to sell Graham at a point that we didn’t want to sell him. But in order for us to move the project on, we had to sell him. Thankfully, we got him back and he’s gone and broken Gary Twigg’s record.
“When you put that into context, the type of players that they are, Twiggy was a brilliant player but he was a box player. Graham’s an all-round player and he’s ahead of Twiggy in terms of goals.
“It’s an incredible achievement and I fully believe that Graham deserves to be in the conversation with the Pat Byrnes of this world.
“And maybe when he retires in a few years, he’ll be in that conversation.”
After a relatively even start, in which the visitors looked dangerous in attack, Rovers had taken the lead through 16-year-old Michael Noonan, albeit helped by Joseph Anang charging out of his goal-line with little prospect of cutting out the long ball and leaving the goal vacant.
“Sometimes you forget that he’s 16 years of age,” said Bradley. “His movement tonight has caused three experienced centre-backs real problems.
“His movement was brilliant, his finish was brilliant. The improvement that he’s shown between the start of the season and now is incredible.
“There’s still so much for him to learn and get better at but he’s got that mentality that he wants to do it. Yeah, a player with an incredibly high ceiling.”
His opposite number Stephen Kenny accepted that his side were beaten by a much better team on the night, though did bemoan the decision not to award Mason Melia a penalty in injury-time in the first half.
With injuries to midfielders Chris Forrester and Kian Leavy, Kenny tweaked the Pat’s shape tonight but stressed that was irrelevant in light of their defensive lapses.
“Shamrock Rovers were a better team tonight. We can’t deny that, we were deservedly beaten.
“It was the absence of the midfield players, Romal Palmer, Keane Levy and Chris Forrester, and we just felt we needed to make sure we had that level of athleticism that we needed and carry an attacking threat and get Aidan Keena and Mason Melia in the same team.
“But it doesn’t matter what system you play with the chances we conceded. A breakaway from our own set play, the first goal.
“We had the first chance, Sean Hoare had a header over. And then Mason Melia (with a chance) to equalise and Ed McGinty saves on a one-on-one with his shoulder.
“And then we definitely had an absolute cast-iron penalty when Mason was taken down.
“But ultimately, Shamrock Rovers were better than us tonight and they won convincingly. We played our own part in that and some of our defending was poor tonight.”
The penalty claim occurred in injury-time in the first half when Melia, lively throughout, cut inside Roberto Lopes just inside the penalty box and appeared to have been brought down by the defender’s left leg but referee Damien MacGraith waved away the appeals.
“It was a blatant penalty, and it would have sent us in 2-1 at the interval, of course, with a different perspective.
“But that’s in isolation. We were second-best tonight, and I’m not trying to suggest otherwise.”
The result sees Pat’s drop seven points behind leaders Rovers, and marks their fourth successive defeat on the road.
“We came in here at the end of last season and won 3-0, and won very convincingly, and now the tables have turned. We’ve been well beaten tonight,but we cannot dwell on that now, there’s such a quick turnover to Waterford on Friday.
“The other couple of games we lost away were in injury time.
“It’s the first time we’ve been well beaten. And we were well beaten. We have to rectify that now and bounce back in the right way on Friday.”
