Derry City and St Pat's Athletic look to Patrick Hoban and Ruairí Keating for goal rush

Recent FAI Cup wins have made Derry City and St Patrick's Athletic smile, if only for a while, but league titles are required to make them feel whole again.

Derry have gone 26 years without a league tile win while St Pat’s are now ten years since they last brought the trophy back home to Inchicore. Both clubs showed themselves capable of being league-winning material for long parts of last season but will be looking to go the full distance in 2024.

They both may feel that the addition of a new centre-forward could be what makes their dreams come true. Those men are Patrick Hoban and Ruairí Keating.

Winning an FAI Cup has often been a step on the way to becoming a league winner so can the teams of Ruaidhri Higgins and Jon Daly follow the below in quickly adding league to cup success?

Team

FAI Cup win

League win

Drogheda United

2005

2007

Sligo Rovers

2010 & 2011

2012

Cork City

2016

2017

Shamrock Rovers

2019

2020

Derry started last season impressively and led the way as the season hit the mid-point at May's end. Although still a long way to go, only four times in the 21-year summer era have the team leading with half the games played not gone on to win the title (Derry 2006, St Pat’s 2010, Cork City 2018 and St Pat’s in 2021).

But a run of one win in seven through the end of June left them six points behind and never looked like getting back on top. That decline started with them managing just one goal in the first four games. This was the crystallisation of goal-scoring problems that held them back all year, they finished as just the fourth best scorers and a tally 10 goals fewer than Shamrock Rovers.

The solution Derry have identified to this problem is signing the second-leading goal scorer in the summer era