Had it gone to the form this game would have yielded three points for Damien Richardson's side and left them sitting nicely on Shelbourne's shoulder two weeks ahead of their league encounter at Tolka Park.

Instead, United went home last night with the point they deserved and the Rovers manager found himself having to dismiss suggestions that the Dublin club simply doesn't have what it takes yet to mount a serious challenge for the title.

If you count a ground they can call their own amongst the requirements for would-be champions, of course, then Rovers are cruelly lacking, a fact probably adequately highlighted by their decision to play that crucial game against the current leaders in Drumcondra despite the fact that it is they who are supposed to be at home.

Still, after 90 minutes of watching them struggle with the limitations of playing at Santry, where the pitch is always small and currently pretty awful, it's not entirely impossible to understand their reasoning.

For all the difficulties, though, the home side actually started yesterday's game brightly. With United apparently set to pick up where they had left off in Richmond Park, where their many shortcomings were persistently exposed, the opening 10 minutes presented a handful of scoring chances, the best of which fell to Brian Byrne whose low, driven shot from the left was saved by David Forde - but only with his foot after the 20-year-old goalkeeper had gone down early and guessed incorrectly.

During those opening exchanges, the visiting side again looked terribly poor, but this time, having survived without conceding an early goal despite a barrage of corners for Rovers, and what looked to be a fairly decent penalty claim, they improved, and after Tony Cousins limped out of the game with a knee injury they clearly began to believe that they were capable of getting something out of the contest.

Over the course of a fairly grim second half, in fact, they had a couple of chances to do more than that, with Eric Lavine twice going close to snatching a winner. But while Don O'Riordan's band of youngsters certainly deserved their single point, three just might have been stretching things a little. "I was disgusted with last week's display, and I made that clear to them," said O'Riordan, "but they've reacted positively out there and I can have no complaints because they've all worked extremely hard to get something out of this game."

The United boss pointed to the injury to Derek O'Brien, who got his first start in the team yesterday, as typical of their recent misfortune.

"We made a flying start to the season, though, and I don't see why, when we have everybody back, we can't rediscover the sort of form that we were showing back in those early weeks."

For Richardson, meanwhile, there will be some concern that his players failed to break down their visitors, particularly in the second half when whatever passes were strung together came from United.

In addition, it will be a day or two before he knows the extent of Cousins' latest injury, and it would be a serious blow if the striker were again forced to sit out a chunk of the season.

With or without the Dubliner, though, Richardson admitted that there is lingering evidence of his team's frailties when he observed: "We are a team that likes to believe that we have the credentials to be title contenders, but to do that you have to take the chances that come your way and for the second week in a row we haven't done that".

With trips to Inchicore and Drumcondra to come between now and the new year, it won't get any easier.

SHAMROCK ROVERS: Horgan; Vaudequin, Palmer, Cronin, Woods; Kenny (Robinson 81 mins), Colwell, Tracey, Byrne; Grant, Cousins (Francis 35 mins).

GALWAY UNITED: Forde; Crossley, Burke, Clery, Morgan; Ryan, Murphy, Sheridan, O'Brien (Malee, 37 mins); Grant, Lavine.

Referee: J O'Neill (Waterford).