Having effectively won last year's title by beating their closest rivals in all three of their meetings, St Patrick's Athletic played their way right back into this season's championship race with a hard-fought defeat of league leaders Cork City at Richmond Park last night.

Trevor Molloy doubled his tally for the season when he opened the scoring in the 73rd minute, but as City reflect on yet another defeat to Liam Buckley's men, their thoughts may linger on the way the game was killed off 13 minutes later.

After some quick movement by Molloy, Alan McNevin finished from six yards out. Either Cork let themselves down badly with the amount of space afforded to the home team's strikers or, as they clearly believes, one or both of them had strayed a yard offside.

Regardless of whether that second goal should have counted, there was little doubt that it was the Dublin club who deserved the points.

They may not have yet recaptured the knack, apparent in recent seasons, for grinding out wins in unpromising circumstances, but over the past couple of months they have become hard to beat again, a fact underlined by the fact that last night's win made it 11 games unbeaten in the league, the last defeat coming at Turner's Cross back in early September.

That win, and the strength of Cork's recent form, however, must have convinced Dave Barry and his players that they could finally come to Richmond Park and get a result. Certainly they went about their business early on like a side that were determined not to allow their hosts take the upper hand and referee Hugh Byrne was kept busy handing out a steady stream of yellow cards.

If they held their own physically, though, City were once again outwitted by the Dubliners, who dominated in midfield through the opening half when they played five there against City's four.

After the break Barry countered by bringing on Anthony Buckley for Gareth Cronin and switching to three at the back, but the net effect seemed to be that Trevor Molloy was allowed more time and space in which to work up front. From then, on home side looked considerably more likely to make the decisive breakthrough.

Even in the first half St Patrick's had the edge on their rivals, but for all their possession they rarely did anything to worry Phil Harrington once they got close to the Cork City box.

Time and again Molloy's attempts to set team-mates up with shooting chances ended with terribly poor passes, while alongside him Marcus Hallows's poor close control let the visiting back four off the hook more than once.

When the goal came it was the result of Molloy trying something different for a change. Picking the ball up some 25 yards out on the right-hand side, the striker had a couple of options but after a frustrating evening of looking after those around him, the 22-year-old opted to let loose this time. Though the shot wasn't far to Phil Harrington's right, its flight appeared to deceive the City keeper.

At the other end, Trevor Wood had been forced into making a couple of decent saves from John Caulfield, whose understanding with Pat Morley had earned City a couple of chances to take the lead slightly against the run of play.

However, City's movement of the ball was better than that of the home side's for stretches, with Liam O'Brien especially influential in midfield and Ollie Cahill occasionally getting the better of the industrious Shane Harte down the left.

In general, though, the St Patrick's wide men worked hard to minimise the problems caused by Cahill and Colin O'Brien and their efforts paid off with most of Woods's workload through the evening coming from corners, the best of which, from Colin O'Brien early in the game, came close to sneaking straight in under the bar.

Around the City box things looked a little less controlled at times and Colin Hawkins, the latest man to be handed Paul Osam's role in the centre of the midfield three, looked like capitalising on some early confusion to score until Liam O'Brien popped up on the line to clear.

At the time it seemed the sort of moment that the home side would come to regret, but having gone on to produce what Liam Buckley described afterwards as his side's "best performance of the season so far", they earned the right to a miss or two.

ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC: Wood; Lynch; S McGuinness, Broughan; Croly, Harte, Hawkins, Russell, Doyle; Hallows, Molloy. Sub: Mcnevin for Hallows (83 mins).

CORK CITY: Harrington; Napier, Daly, Hill, Cronin; C O'Brien, L O'Brien, Freyne, Cahill; Morley, Caulfield. Subs: Flanagan for Freyne (44 mins), Buckley for Cronin (half-time), Dobbs for Caulfield (78 mins).

Referee: H Byrne (Dublin).