Blues had a good warm up in front of goals on Monday night when they easily overcame Shamrock Rovers. Lee Novak, Nicola Zigic, Callum Reilly and Matt Green were all on target.
By the time City took the lead in the 18th minute, they could have already been 1-0 up when Novak was gifted the ball, he found Chris Burke, who in turn found Zigic on the edge of the box but he fired just wide of the mark.
Rovers ended up changing keepers through injury to Murphy, but it wasn’t long before his replacement Brush was picking the ball out of the net. Zigic set the goal up with his vision and ability to play a ball into the box for Novak to latch onto the ball behind a static defence and slot past the keeper for 1-0.
Just after the half hour mark, City were two goals to the good, this time it was Zigic on the score sheet when he picked up a pass from Callum Reilly and the Serb had enough time to pick out his place and curl the ball in off the post.
Blues kept the momentum going and were soon three up when after good work from Burke and Novak, Reilly had a pop from the edge of the box and his effort took a deflection and into the net.
In the second half Blues had chances to add goals but they could only find the net once more thanks to sub Matt Green just before the hour. It was that man Burke who was involved again when he sent in a cross from the right which Green headed home from the six yard mark.
Green then left the field on a stretcher after receiving treatment for around five minutes and he was replaced by keeper Colin Doyle. And the Blues keeper had two chances of adding to the score sheet, one of the chances being a free kick which the Rovers keeper managed to save.
Shamrock Rovers: Murphy (Brush 16); Sullivan (c) (Rice 60), McGuinness, Foran (Oman 46), Ledwith; McCormack, Robinson (Chambers 68); Quigley (Finn 68); Sheppard, Zayed, Dennehy (O’Connor 46).
Subs not used: McCabe, Stewart, Confey, Heaney.
Blues: Randolph; Eardley (Elliott 42), Spector (Hancock (58), Mullins (Bartley 58), Robinson (c) (Burn 58); Burke, Reilly (Arthur 58), Lee, Davis (Ambrose 58); Novak (Green 54 (Doyle 83)), Zigic (Shinnie 58).
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