Shamrock Rovers followed their win over Drogheda United on Friday with another over Cork City as their title challenge gathered momentum.
The win means that the Hoops will now be only six points behind the leaders St. Pat’s if they win their game in hand.
Barry Ferguson set them on their way and Ger Rowe completed the job just before the hour mark to leave the Leesiders title challenge in a rather large degree of bother.
The League of Ireland’s latest full international, Joe Gamble, started the game for Cork, but he couldn’t do anything about Rovers going ahead after 19 minutes.
Indeed he will have been disappointed to have committed the foul that lead to Ferguson’s strike.
It wasn’t in the most dangerous position of the pitch, however, and Damien Richardson will not have been happy with his side’s marking as they allowed the centre-half get on the end of David Cassidy’s free-kick from the left touch-line.
It was Ferguson’s first goal since his close season move from Bohemians and it left the Rebels staring down the barrel of another disappointing away performance, three weeks after their 4-1 drubbing in Sligo.
That looked like the only result on the cards after 58 minutes when Ger Rowe smashed home after a Cassidy corner wasn’t cleared properly by a static Cork defence. But take nothing away from Rowe’s strike, it was one of true quality.
Indeed the Hoops could have had a brace in the 13 minutes preceding that in the second-half had Davie O’Connor not first headed over the bar from another Cassidy corner and forced Devine into a superb save from another.
Shamrock Rovers: Murphy; O’Brien, Ferguson, Price, Pender; Cassidy, Danny O’Connor, I Ryan, Dave O’Connor; Rowe, Purcell (Myler, 77).
Cork City: Devine; Horgan, O’Callaghan (Kelly, 61), Murray, D Ryan; Lordan (Behan, 75), Gamble, Softic (Murphy, 61), Kearney; O’Donovan, O’Flynn.
Ref: P Tuite (Dublin).
