Derry City get better of Shamrock Rovers to take President's Cup glory

Derry City won the bragging rights over reigning SSE Airtricity League champions Shamrock Rovers, to seal their first ever President's Cup with a 2-0 win at the Ryan McBride Brandywell Stadium.

First-half goals from Will Patching and Michael Duffy sealed the deserved victory, but both managers will be pleased that their squads got a good work-out before next week's league season openers.

After President Michael D Higgins was introduced to the players, there was a minute's applause for the recent passing of City boss Higgins' brother Kevin, who sadly died in Sweden a week ago.

It was the home side who settled the better with Will Patching and Cian Kavanagh both going close early on. City took the lead on 23 minutes as Ben Doherty found Michael Duffy down the left and his low centre found Patching and the midfielder made no mistake firing past Rovers keeper Leon Pohls.

Soon after some neat passing ended with Johnny Kenny feeding fellow debut boy Marcus Poom, but the midfielder blasted well over from 20 yards. Derry had strong claims for a penalty on the half-hour mark when Lee Grace seemed to foul Cian Kavanagh twice inside the box, but referee Neil Doyle waved play on.

Moments later Ritchie Towell was inches away from equalising, but his dipping strike from the edge of the box, which had City keeper Brian Maher scrambling, whistled just over. A terrible goalkeeping mistake by Pohls meant City doubled their lead on 39 minutes as Mark Connolly's cross field pass found Duffy.

He cut inside and his 20 yard strike went straight through the Rovers keeper. Rovers made four changes at the break bringing on international duo Jack Byrne and Graham Burke along with Trevor Clarke and Neil Farrugia replacing Daniel Cleary, Darragh Nugent,