Shamrock Rovers manager Pat Scully has conceded the league title to leaders Drogheda United following his side's 1-0 defeat to bottom side Longford Town at the weekend.

Rovers conceded a 92nd minute goal to their former striker Dave Mooney and Scully said his team will finish no better than fifth unless performances improve in the weeks ahead.

The Dublin club currently occupies second position, level on points with St Patrick's Athletic.  Both teams are seven points off leaders Drogheda.

Rovers still have nine league games remaining before the season finishes in November but Scully believes the title is beyond his side following Friday's defeat.

"It was dreadful - a very poor performance," he said.  "Some of the individual performances were really substandard. We certainly didn't deserve to win the game.

"The manner of defeat is very hard to stomach. We had to win a lot of our games to win the league. We knew we had to do that. But just the manner of it is a little bit galling and a little bit sickening.

"The goal that they won it on summed it up really. It was a soft goal. People weren't focused and the concentration levels were really poor.

"We had six or seven players who had knocks and hadn't trained all week. The preparation wasn't great. I don't know whether that's an excuse or not, but we didn't look tuned in."

Drogheda play UCD at home tonight and a win for Paul Doolin's side would open a 10 point lead at the top.  Either way, the title is Drogheda's to squander.

"We had an outside chance of winning the title and it would have been lovely to push it as far as we possibly could, but that's gone now," added Scully.

"It's a horrible way to surrender a challenge for a league, a horrible way. We have no chance of winning it now.

"It's a disappointing way for the challenge to fade and if we continue to play like that we'll probably finish about fifth I'd say."

Longford manager Alan Matthews saw his side score two disallowed goals before Mooney pounced late on and believes the win was deserved.  However, he is not getting carried away.

"We needed to play really well to come and win.  They were the home team and have designs to try and win the league.  We have a hunger and passion to try and stay in the league.

"We are not going to get above our station as we're still bottom of this league," he said.  "We still have a long way to go and there's a lot of football still to be played."