The formbook suggested that, if they could manage it, both of these teams were going to lose this game at Santry yesterday, but as it happened Derry City's players had come to town with other ideas. Within 10 minutes they'd ensured that defeat would be theirs and theirs alone. And what with the bungling at one end and the dismal finishing at the other, there was little disputing that they really deserved it.

The result ensured that their slide down the Premier Division table continues, but their position is at least a little more realistic that that of Rovers. The Dubliners won six of their seven opening league games and though reality is beginning to catch up with Damien Richardson's players, the fact that they were gifted the points yesterday has helped to slow their collapse of recent weeks.

Both managers are disarmingly frank about the limitations of their panels. Richardson insisted throughout his team's runaway start that he simply didn't have the players to sustain a realistic title challenge and Kevin Mahon talked yesterday about reaching a point, somewhere a couple of seasons down the line, where his youngsters will have the experience to hold their own at this level.

In the meantime, the respective performances in this match would suggest that Rovers will gradually slip further back towards the anonymity of the middle of the table while City may have their work cut out not to become involved in the upper end of the relegation dog fight.

Too much, on the other hand, could be read into a game that was effectively over before it had even begun. Had Graham Lawlor not scored twice, once in the eighth and again in the 10th minute, then maybe we really would have seen what the teams were made off.

As it was, City never looked capable of playing their way back into things. In fact, they lost their grip further shortly before the break when Marc Kenny's corner from the left was turned neatly goalwards by Terry Palmer who had a lot of time to pick his spot, but who nevertheless picked it well.

While Mahon admitted that the scoreline looked pretty bad, he pointed to the fact that his side had created by far the better of the chances in the second period. That Paddy McLaughlin's headed goal would have stood but for the substitute straying fractionally off-side might have been some consolation all right, but it's less clear how the Derry boss could have been cheered up by the fact that Darren McCaul had shot straight at Tony O'Down when clean through on him or that in injurytime Shaun Gallagher had driven against the inside of the post from closer to goal than the penalty spot.

He might, on the other hand, have been perked up by the fact that his decision to switch from a flat back four in the first period to using Peter Hutton as a sweeper had substantially changed the balance of the game. Richardson claimed afterwards that his team had played as well at the back in the second period as they had up front in the first, but the truth was that against a better side they never would have got away with either the chances they conceded inside the area or the free-kicks they dished out around it.

Even after Paul Hegarty had been reckless enough to get himself sent off for a second bout of dissent, Rovers opted to sit back and let City chase the game. That Tony O'Dowd had only one decent save to make, in the 90th minute from Gary Beckett after the visiting side's best move of the match, said a good deal more about City's inability to stage a decent build-up or to push the ball around efficiently on a surprisingly poor surface than it did about the home side's ability to take the game by the throat.

Rovers's solid record against the division's weaker teams to date and trips to Waterford, Sligo and Galway over the next four weeks should help to keep the gloom away for the moment. City's programme between now and Christmas looks a little more daunting, but whether they can avail of the opportunity to put distance between themselves and the current strugglers looks a very different matter.

SHAMROCK ROVERS: O'Dowd; Brazil, Purdy, Palmer, Dunne; Robinson, Colwell, Kenny, Byrne; Lawlor, Francis. Subs: Stewart for Lawlor (84 mins).

DERRY CITY: Platt; McCallion, Hutton, Kelly, Hargan; Gallagher, Doherty, Hegarty, McIvor; Beckett, Coyle. Subs: McCaul for McCallion (half-time), McLaughlin for McCallion (50 mins).

Referee: H Byrne (Dublin).