IT was a Cup final day's dream come true - for a quotes getter that is. No losers' dressing room to negotiate and everyone - even Brian Kerr - happy enough to have another go next weekend.

Shelbourne manager Damien Richardson made the expected defence of his goalkeeper. But, that controversy aside, he was pleased with their performance.

"The outstanding emotion I feel now is pride. There were many good things about the day, and the way we came back into things was outstanding," he said. And he denied he ever felt the equaliser was beyond them.

"I look through my side and I see the players I've got and I know that there are three of four of them capable of producing something special right up to the death. People like Geoghegan, Rutherford, Sheridan and Tilson - I mean Dave Tilson was magical, like Gene Kelly up and down the wing - could all have saved it for us.

In the end it was Tony Sheridan who produced the goal that earned another crack at the prize, and there was little doubting the pleasure the former Coventry midfielder took from his moment of glory.

"It's brilliant. I've never been in a Cup final and, to be honest, I thought at the time that we were going to be beaten. But Freddie Davis (Richardson's assistant) kept saying to me all through the game that their keeper was off his line so, if I was having a shot, to dip it.

"When I got the chance the ball came handily to me, off the heels of one of their players, and I just hit it. It was just a lovely feeling," he said.

Not quite as lovely, perhaps, as the feeling Dave Campbell enjoyed after scoring at the other end, for, in addition to the glory, there was a few extra bob to savour. "I had a fiver on myself to score the first goal at 25-1," the beaming St Patrick's centre half said.

"I heard that I was 12-1 and thought I wouldn't bother, but then I found out that that was Paul Campbell, so when I heard the odds I got my money down."

The goal, he admitted, had more than a hint of good fortune about it. But, having described how Brian Flood had pushed the ball on to his boot, only to watch as it bounced into the net, he couldn't resist the temptation to comment "great finish though", with a smirk.

Against a 10 man side, that goal looked as though it might have been enough to collect the double. Even Shelbourne's John O'Rourke, so impressive pushing forward from midfield until the sending off, conceded that he felt that that might be the end of the dream.

"I thought that once they scored we were in trouble. Early on I was very happy with the way things were going. We were making some good runs which were paying some dividends, but we didn't get the goal and I thought that that might cost us."

His captain, and yesterday's Man Of The Match, Mick Neville, felt, however, that all of the pressure they had exerted would yield a goal. And nobody felt that once Sheridan, who Neville described as "the best player I have ever seen in the League of Ireland", hit the ball that there was any doubt about its destination.

"It was only going one place," said Eddie Gormley, off whom the ball had hopped for the shot. "My heart sank as I watched it," he added.

Protesting that he needed to see it again before passing comment, Kerr remarked, "At that stage if it had gone in off his ear it would have been a great goal given the situation they were in at the time.

It was, he admitted, a some what, disappointing performance by his side, but there had been positive things about the game too. "I thought that in the second half we used our spare man well, we got in behind them and got some great crosses in. But there was a nervousness in their play.

The lads weren't used to it, anyone who had played in a Cup final had an advantage out there. But I'm happy at this stage that we're still in the Cup," he said.

If his goal scorer stood to gain financially from the afternoon's proceedings, then Kerr, whose testimonial match between St Patrick's and Middlesbrough is on this Thursday, might lose out because of the replay.