St Patrick's Ath 0 Sligo R 0:HAVING SET a pace early on in this title race that their rivals found a little too hard too handle, it is now just a matter of clearing the handful of hurdles that stand between them and the finish line for Sligo Rovers.

Last night’s visit to Richmond Park was arguably the most treacherous they faced on the run-in to what would be a first championship in 35 years, but the league leaders’ nerve held steady and Ian Baraclough’s men cleared the obstacle with nothing more than the hint of a stumble.

Over the course of the 90 minutes the home side enjoyed the best of the chances, and the majority of them, but their visitors always looked like they knew what they were doing.

With Mark Quigley floating up front and Joseph Ndo just as free, it seemed, to ramble in midfield, there was always an eye on creating something that would have delivered all three points.

Collectively, though, Barraclough’s men put in quite a shift and at the end of the night there was little question that they deserved the one point that ultimately does them rather nicely.

If St Patrick’s really did believe before this game that they could play their way back into contention at the very top of the table then clearly they needed to win this encounter a good deal more than Sligo.

That probably showed over the course of the first half as Liam Buckley’s men tended to show more urgency about getting the ball forward. The home side’s approach came closer to bearing fruit, on balance, for there were some slightly frantic moments around the Rovers’ area, including one when James Chambers looked to have a decent claim for a spot kick after his shot had flown wide off the arm of a defender.

Neil Doyle wasn’t interested on that occasion, though, and generally the Sligo back four, with plenty of help from the likes of David Cawley and Danny Ventre, coped well enough; the upshot being that Barry Murphy had few enough actual saves to make, at least until late on.

Sligo, meanwhile, looked a little more comfortable when they sought to push out a little more as the second half wore on. The hosts had been quick to close them down over the first 50 minutes or so, and so Rovers had struggled sometimes to push the ball around quite as well as they usually do. As the minutes slipped by, however, they began to find their stride for spells and managed to shift things a little further up the pitch.

Around their own area, the Dubliners defended with plenty of determination, but it tended to be a little rushed and too often a defender would make an important intervention only to play an attempted clearance straight to a Sligo player.

Even Sligo’s best spells, though, were punctuated by dangerous looking counter-attacks as the league leaders allowed themselves to be caught out at the back.

They ranged from the slightly sloppy, as when Jason McGuinness inexplicably let a cross-field ball pass him early in the second period without realising that Chris Forrester was lurking close by, to the hastily improvised, such as Rogers, minutes later, having to come a long way out in order to head a long ball forward clear of the onrushing Christy Fagan.

The threat, in fact, never really went away and the young striker fired slightly wide of the target at one stage too when Jake Kelly had teed him up for what should have been a decent shot on target.

James Chambers went closer still when he turned an Ian Bermingham cross just the wrong side of the right-hand post and again there was a sense that really a little more should have been made of the opportunity.

Rovers, in contrast, almost made the most of the one that came their way a couple of minutes from time when Lee Lynch’s angled ball into the area was met by Ventre, whose goal-bound header required a decent stop from Barry Murphy.

The save was enough to keep his side in the game but the same can’t really be said of a title race in which there increasingly appears to be only one possible winner.

ST PATRICK’S ATH: Murphy; O’Brien, Kenna, Browne, Bermingham; Chambers (Coombes, 81 mins); Forrester (Kelly, 71 mins), Bolger, Carroll, O’Connor (Meenan, 65 mins); Fagan.

SLIGO ROVERS: Rogers; Keane, Peers, McGuinness, Gaynor; Conneely (Cretaro, 85 mins), Ventre, Ndo, Cawley (Lynch, 61 mins), Boco; Quigley (Buchanan, 90 mins).

Referee: N Doyle (Dublin).