John Mountney sinks Hoops with stoppage-time winner

Captain John Mountney popped up with a superb 91st-minute winner to give Dundalk a huge SSE Airtricity Men's Premier Division win over Shamrock Rovers at Oriel Park.

The 31-year-old fired past Leon Pohls with his side first attempt on target of the night to close the gap at the bottom of the table to just three points following Drogheda Utd's dramatic late collapse at home to Galway Utd.

The winning goal, Mountney’s first at Oriel Park in five years, marked a brilliant end to a week of upheavel at the Co Louth side with both Head of Football Operations Brian Gartland and manager Noel King departing, the latter on health grounds.

This result will give the Lilywhites hope of avoiding the drop for as well as being their second win of the campaign, it was also a sixth successive clean sheet at home - a feat not achieved since by them since the start of the 2015 season.

While there were celebrations for the hosts, it was a hugely disappointing night for Shamrock Rovers who lost further ground in the SSE Airtricity Men’s Premier Division title race.

Stephen Bradley’s side were late arriving at Oriel and never really got going on a night when the two sides above them, Shelbourne and Derry City, both won.

They are now six points shy of Damien Duff’s tabletoppers with the Hoops on a run of just one win in their last seven - a worrying trend ahead of their match at home to second placed Derry City on Monday.

The kick-off at Oriel Park was delayed by half an hour due to the Rovers kit not arriving on time as a result of the traffic delays caused by the seven hour closure of the M50 earlier in the day due to a fatal road traffic accident.

The game then took a while to get going also with the first and only effort on target in the opening