The FAI Cup will go on without 2022 finalists Shelbourne after Jonathan Afolabi swung the knockout blow in this first-round straightener at Dalymount Park.
Beaten by Derry City in last year's final, Damien Duff had set his sights on replicating a Cup run that put so much gloss on his debut season in Irish football.
However, Bohemians took early control of this game in a way that they failed to during last week’s 1-1 league meeting between the sides.
More than a rerun of last week’s clash, this game was important to Bohs fans still scarred by the three-goal thrashing Shels inflicted on them in last year’s Cup quarter-final.
That capitulation was the caricature performance of a Gypsies side that had lost their fighting spirit. While this showing was far from perfect, no one can doubt Declan Devine has returned passion and fire to this Dublin 7 side.
Duff spoke before the game about the "edge" in this fixture and it’s not over the top to say that meetings between these two are a petri dish for ill-feeling.
An impassioned crowd, and a slick wet surface, created the perfect conditions for a roaring crusade, one that ebbed and flowed with limited intervention from the evening’s match officials.
Starting with attacking intent, Bohs crafted a litany of early chances.
Conor Kearns pushed an early Jordan Flores free-kick over, while James Clark curled a strike just wide from inside the box.
Bohemians' Dylan Connolly and Shelbourne’s Evan Caffrey played out the battle of the night, as the 28-year-old Gypsies winger repeatedly accelerated around his opponent.
The opener was always coming, and it arrived just after the 30-minute mark. Afolabi leaped highest to direct Flores’ corner into the back of the net – his first FAI Cup goal to add to a tally of six league goals this season.
The Reds, for their part, were limited to rare forays forward.
That said, they felt rightly aggrieved when, 10 minutes before the break, a penalty shout of gigantic proportions was wrongly waved away. Duelling with Caffrey inside the Bohs box, McManus all but played the ball with his hand to steal away a goalscoring opportunity.
Wild protests ensued as a handful of Reds fans fired projectiles at the assistant referee in front of their stand – an all too common occurrence across the league at the moment.
Shels pushed forward into the second half, but their attacking pair of Boyd and Jack Moylan fell short when trying to test James Talbot. Bohs fans grew confident as Shels’ strikeforce failed to sting.
Rather, the Gypsies edged closer to a second. Both Clark and Afolabi should have done better with shots in the box as Duff got increasingly animated on the sideline.
Ultimately, the next goal never came for either side as Bohemians comfortably booked their place in the Cup’s second round.
Bohemian FC: James Talbot; Keith Buckley, Krystian Nowak (Cian Byrne, 66), Kacper Radkowski, Patrick Kirk; James McManus, James Clarke, Jordan Flores (Adam McDonnell, 54); Dylan Connolly, Oluwaseun Akintunde (John O’Sullivan, 78); Jonathan Afolabi (Declan McDaid, 78).
Shelbourne: Conor Kearns; JR Wilson, Patrick Barrett (Andrew Quinn, 59), Luke Byrne (Kameron Ledwidge, 71), Evan Caffrey; Mark Coyle (Harry Wood, 59), Gavin Molloy; Jad Hakiki (Shane Farrell, 59), Jonathan Lunney; Jack Moylan, Sean Boyd.
Referee: Paul McLaughlin.
