Shamrock Rovers showed tremendous fighting spirit to come from behind secure a share of the spoils at Derry City.
The Tallaght men were trailing to Ronan Curtis' quick fire brace but fought back thanks to Gary McCabe before Stephen McPhail's late free-kick earned them a valuable point.
Both sides were shadow boxing in the early stages until City netted twice in the space of two minutes thanks to Curtis.
The talented winger made no mistake from the edge of the box, calmly slotting the ball home past the despairing dive of Barry Murphy to open the scoring.
With their tails up Derry doubled their lead on 19 minutes as Rovers failed to deal with Lukas Schubert's corner and Barry McNamee's side footed centre across the six yard box found Curtis unmarked. He duly blasted the ball home.
Rovers did pull a goal back on 39 minutes after Derry were caught out playing too much at the back.
Gerard Doherty's pass found Aaron McEneff some 20 yards from his own goal, but the midfielder lost possession to Gary Shaw and the alert McCabe was on hand to make no mistake blasting home past the City ‘keeper.
Rovers missed a great chance to level things on 54 minutes after Derry old boy Simon Madden burst clear down the right before picking out Shaw at the near post, but the striker fired wide from close range.
On the counter attack Conor McCormack let fly but his 25 yard drive just after the hour mark flew just over the bar.
Rovers were unlucky not to level things on 77 minutes as David Webster's header from McCabe's corner was superbly tipped away by Doherty.
The Dubliners levelled things on 84 minutes as McPhail's right wing free-kick flew through a ruck of players and somehow found Doherty's net.
Right at the death a Barry McNamee's corner found Dean Jarvis, but his low drive was superbly kept out by Murphy.
Derry City: Doherty, McDermott, Vemmelund, Karner, Jarvis; McEneff, McCormack; Schubert (Monaghan 72), McNamee, Curtis (Boyle 86); Patterson.
Shamrock Rovers: Murphy, Webster, O'Connor, McCabe, Shaw (Dobbs 78), Madden, D Clarke (Miele 72), Boyd, T Clarke, Heaney, McPhail.
Referee: Robert Harvey (Dublin).
