Pat does a Jose as 10 men crash

THESE two teams were level on points at the start of this game but they weren’t even level in numbers by the end as Bohemians had Keith Buckley and manager Pat Fenlon sent off and Derry City made the most of their numerical advantage to register a victory made even more comfortable when Bohs fluffed a penalty with five minutes to go.

Thriving in their first season as a resurrected top-flight club, Stephen Kenny’s side, in their away strip of yellow and black, buzzed like bees from the off, though their attractive build-up play tended to fall apart with the final ball.

For their part, the home side were much more direct in their efforts to get the ball forward to striker Anto Flood and, 18 minutes in, he sprung Derry’s high offside line and came agonisingly close to breaking the deadlock with a lobbed effort over the advancing Gerard Doherty.

The Derry keeper was then called into action as he turned away a header from Bohs captain Owen Heary, who was making his 100th competitive start for the club, and Doherty again had to be alert to make sure a Killian Brennan free didn’t bend in at the far post.

However, a largely uneventful first half came explosively to the boil a minute before the break when Keith Buckley was shown a red card for a challenge on Daniel Lafferty, leading to heated exchanges which saw Liam Burns and Eamon Zayed both receive yellows.

Then to rub salt into Bohs’ wounds, Lafferty promptly popped up in the home penalty area to glance a Kevin Derry free-kick to the corner of the net before the half ended with Bohs boss Fenlon also being sent off and the home support in uproar as the two teams left the field.

Two minutes into the second half, James McClean started and finished a flowing Derry move to put the Candystripes two up.

That should have been that but, five minutes from the end, Bohs blew their big chance to get back into the game when – having been needlessly pushed in the box by Shane McEleney — Brennan brushed himself down but chipped the resultant penalty against the crossbar and Flood could only head the rebound off the same piece of woodwork.

BOHEMIANS: O’ Connor, Heary, Burns, Price (Feely 86), O’ Brien, Buckley, Bayly, Brennan, Cahill (Dixon 73), Traynor, Flood.

DERRY CITY: Doherty, McCallion, Greacen, S. McEleney, Lafferty, McGlynn, Higgins, Deery, McClean McLaughlin 88), P. McEleney (McDaid 87), Zayed .

Referee: P Sutton (Dublin).