Stephen Kenny believes that some League of Ireland players are “taking turns” to foul Mason Melia.
The St Patrick’s Athletic manager expressed concern about the physical attention his 17-year-old striker is receiving this season, following Thursday’s 1-0 defeat of Lithuanian side Hegelmann at Richmond Park in the Uefa Conference League first round qualifier.
“He keeps coming back,” said Kenny. “I asked the fourth official, [after] the centre half fouled him four times and didn’t get a yellow card – he came through the back of him. [The fourth official] said they weren’t leading to goal scoring opportunities and things like that.
“It was ‘persistent fouling’ so I think [Melia] shipped a bit of treatment all right. He comes back, he doesn’t hide. He knows he missed chances, but he keeps getting in the box again and he missed a couple more, and ultimately he gets taken down for the penalty.”
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Melia missed three gilt-edged chances before Aidan Keena scored a late penalty to give St Pat’s the advantage ahead of Thursday’s second-leg in Lithuania.
Kenny noted that several St Pat’s players wasted chances to score a second goal by “snatching” at shots before the former Republic of Ireland manager returned to the attention Melia is receiving from defenders ahead of his €1.9 million move to Tottenham Hotspur in January.
“Mason has been getting a lot of treatment, even in the domestic games, I feel,” said Kenny. “You know, he’s been getting extra, you know, extra.
“In some games some players are actually taking turns having a go at him, rather than one player. I felt that a couple of times. So we do have to protect him. We haven’t played him in all the games. We didn’t play him in the Bohs game last week. We took him out.
“You know, he’s young and we can’t just play him relentlessly. So we’ve had to manage him a bit. But he is an outstanding talent and he did really well tonight. Didn’t finish, but he kept going. And he was involved in the penalty, so we’ll take that.”
