Late goal for Cork gets a point against St Pat’s

St Patrick’s Athletic 1 Cork City 1

Ruairi Keating came to the rescue of Cork City at Richmond Park last night as his goal deep into stoppage-time earned the second-from-bottom Leesiders a share of the spoils with St Patrick’s Athletic in the SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division.

Republic of Ireland U21 goalkeeper Tiernan Brooks was handed a Cork City debut by former St Pat’s player and manager Liam Buckley on the same day it was announced that he had joined on loan from Notts County for the remainder of the season and he produced a fine stop from a Jamie Lennon piledriver on 24 minutes.

Clearcut chances were proving few and far between either side of this effort, until the Saints eventually hit the front in the 39th minute when Jake Mulraney unleashed an unstoppable strike into the top-left hand corner of the net.

This left City facing into a 1-0 interval deficit and they suffered an additional setback when Brooks was replaced on 55 minutes after previously receiving treatment on a number of occasions.

It was another member of Jim Crawford’s U21 international side, Jimmy Corcoran, who deputised for Brooks but just when St Pat’s appeared primed to move within two points of Shamrock Rovers at the top-flight summit, Keating dramatically fired home with all of 93 minutes on the clock.

St Patrick’s Athletic: Lyness; Brockbank (Murphy, 64 mins), Curtis, McGrath, Breslin; Lennon, Forrester (Timmermans, 91 mins); Mulraney, McCormack (Lonergan, 74 mins), M Doyle (Norman, 64 mins); Carty (E Doyle, 74 mins).

Cork City: Brooks (Corcoran, 55 mins); Custovic, Hakkinen (Coleman, 46 mins), Honohan; Bargary, Bolger (Gilchrist, 84 mins), Coffey, O’Donovan (Drinan, 55 mins); O’Brien Whitmarsh; Keating, Owolabi (Murphy, 67 mins).

Referee: D Dunne (Dublin).