Derry inch just that bit nearer

ANOTHER step sideways, another step forwards and for all their frustration, in the cold light of day Derry City will still regard this as a good night at the office. They're even nearer now, and victory at home to St Patrick's on Saturday will take them over the finishing line.

An edge-of-the-seat game had them on the lip of the title, and battering away amid memories of a 1-0 defeat to Rovers which denied them the title in 1989.

In an extraordinarily nervous yet eventful game, Derry twice came within a lick of paint of trailing 2-0. But then, having given themselves 12 minutes to clinch the championship, they were denied a blatant penalty and were within a whisker of a dramatic, injury-time winner was that kind of night. Felix Healy and Pat Byrne exchanged wry smiles at the end, each having died another manager's little death and each falling short of the result they needed. Yet both will have been reasonably content.

Dragging it out like this does have its bonuses, if not for the Derry manager's frayed nerves. "The chairman will be a happy man," quipped Healy, in light of his team ensuring "another bumper night next Saturday".

"I felt we were a bit unlucky. I couldn't believe it when Peter Hutton just missed that possible winner in injury time. I could feel all the emotion of the season just draining out of me for a few seconds."

Healy admitted: "If we scored earlier in the second-half I felt we would have won it by three or 4-1. We were definitely nervous. But hearing that SheIs have lost I can not see us winning the league now.

"It was one of those nights when we weren't getting any breaks of the ball and efforts like James Keddy's were bouncing the wrong side of the posts."

Rovers, too, feel a couple of points short of their survival target. "I was delighted with the team's commitment," said Byrne. "We could have had a few more goals. Tony (Cousins) was outstanding again. We're getting there, and our goal difference gives us an extra cushion."

They should survive, even if this was an uncharacteristically stubborn, almost stealthily classical away performance in which they spent much of the night defending deep and en bloc.

Initially, and not surprisingly, they had looked the more relaxed side. The tension amongst the 5,000 crowd, as quiet as church mice save for when news of Finn Harps' latest goals a few miles away were relayed to them like bushfire, was as palpable as it was amongst the home players.

For Derry, the sight of Liam Coyle and Gary Beckett colliding in their effort to convert a first minute Declan Boyle cross was to prove an accurate barometer of their over-eagerness. At the back, they were just as hurried and edgy, which was compounded by loose marking.

Once the game settled down, Rovers had the better of it, with Sean Francis and Cousins roaming the front line well and the midfielders coming through menacingly. A 15th-minute Marc Kenny strike sent a shiver through the Brandywell air, as did his typically testing free behind the defence two minutes later.

Within moments, ripples of applause were the prelude to a full-throated roar when the public address man confirmed that Shelbourne had fallen one behind. Almost immediately, Beckett teed up Keddy for a miscued shot. But Derry were coming to life as fitfully as their fans, even when Shelbourne fell 2-0 down after 22 minutes.

One wondered about the usefulness of the announcements. Chants of "champions" duly. proved premature after 25 minutes when Paul Curran headed a long Leonard Curtis free beyond the edge of the area for Derek Treacy to chest under control before dipping a superb, 25-yard volley past the diving Tony O'Dowd.

Up to then, Pat Byrne had been as good as his word, but his pre-match quip that "Rovers couldn't defend" was to be tested unrelentingly for the remainder of the night.

There was a touch of the surreal about Robbie Horgan's mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous, and it didn't take long for a sense of panic to set into Rovers' over-populated area. About two minutes later clearances were being sliced away to anywhere and everywhere.

Paul Hegarty, who has grown stronger as the season has worn on, took up the cudgel, driving Derry forward with his forceful midfield play and, indicative of his positive instincts throughout, shot over on the run. Curran won three successive headers in the Rovers area, and then Horgan missed a Keddy corner before slapping Gavin Dykes' return centre, then flapping at another cross before gathering a Keddy drive at the second attempt.

But Horgan stood up well to a Peter Hutton shot, was relieved to see Keddy's lob bounce over the angle, and brilliantly turned away a Curran volley.

Nevertheless, the deathly silence of hearts stopping twice enveloped the ground as Cousins' first-time volley after 58 minutes. struck the bar and his exquisite turn and shot 10 minutes later hit the inside of the far post.

You sensed then that it might be Derry's night; all the more so when the breaks came their way 12 minutes from time. Hegarty, storming through again, was the provider. Moving onto his own header on the edge of the area, Hegarty's cross was cut out by Pat Fenlon only for Beckett to score with a deflected, left-footed shot off the prostrate Fenlon and past the wrong-footed Horgan.

The crowd were in full voice now, and the Fat Lady was clearing her throat, particularly after news of further neighbourly help 17 miles away. Keddy was at last finding space on the left against the willing Niall Keogh, cuttings inside to test Horgan and then seeing his cross to an unmarked Beckett blocked by Gino Brazil's raised hands.

Hegarty, who deserved it more than anyone, shot over once more before Liam Coyle turned Cruyff like by the side of the area and crossed deftly with the outside of his boot for the outstretched Hutton to divert the ball inches wide of the far post.

Almost there then, but almost there now.