They'll puzzle over it this morning in the Shamrock Rovers camp: how could they have so dominated the second half of this clash with championship rivals Cork and yet taken nothing from the game?

Damien Richardson's side struck upon, it seemed, some sort of footballing variation of the law of diminishing returns: the more they convincingly dictated the course of the game the worse things got. By the time the final whistle arrived, goals from James Mulligan, Neal Horgan and Ollie Cahill were enough to ensure that a frustrating evening ended with the home side's lead at the top of the premier division table halved to three points.

Having fallen behind to Mulligan's goal three minutes before the break, Rovers evened things up three after it when Tony Grant nipped in to calmly slot the ball past Michael Devine after Damien O'Rourke had misjudged the flight of Tony O'Dowd's long kick-out.

For the next 25 minutes they dominated the visiting defence in search of the goal that would give them the lead and ensure they maintained their six point lead at he top of the table.

Sean Francis, Billy Woods and Derek Tracey all had good chances to put their side in front as the Dubliners enjoyed comfortably their best spell of the game, but Devine did well when required, while the home side's finishing was never quite what it should have been.

With just over 70 minutes played, the league leaders were punished for the string of missed chances when Horgan restored Cork's lead with a 25-yard strike that flew past O'Dowd and into the top corner.

Rovers promptly picked up where they had left off, dominating the run of play and peppering Devine with attempts on goal. None was quite on a par with Cahill's injury-time strike, a wonderful, curling finish that followed a free by Horgan on the left side of midfield.

Had the hosts played with the same fluency through the first half it's hard to believe that they wouldn't have taken more out of the contest. The game had been open from the earliest stages, with both midfields left plenty of space in which to work, but neither seemed really capable of taking control.

Scoring opportunities were, as a result, scarce on the ground, with Rovers just about having the better of the ones produced prior to their opponents taking the lead.

Several times it required fairly desperate lunging blocks from City defenders to keep the Dubliners's strikers at bay, but Derek Coughlan and co seemed to be up to the task, for Pat Deans' shot 26 minutes in was as close as Damien Richardson's men came to taking the lead, and that flew just over the right hand angle.

Both teams contributed a couple of fairly awful free kicks to the proceedings, with Greg Costello's - a powerful strike last seen soaring off in the direction of Ballyfermot - late in the half just about eclipsing an almost equally miserable effort from Ollie Cahill.

When the pair came face to face down City's left flank, though, it was the pacey midfielder who tended to come out on top. His speed was crucial to the creation of the goal, with the 27-year-old skipping past the Rovers right back with ease and pulling the ball low across the face of the goal towards Mulligan who, in turn, turned it neatly in the direction of the bottom left corner.

SHAMROCK ROVERS: O'Dowd; Costello, Palmer, Scully, Byrne; Tracey, Deans, Colwell (Robinson, 71 mins), Woods (Kenny, 87 mins); Francis (S Grant, 76 mins), T Grant.

CORK CITY: Devine; Daly (Flanagan 62 mins), Coughlan, O'Rourke, Horgan; Carey, Bennett, O'Grady, Cahill; Hartigan, Mulligan.

Referee: P McKeon (Dublin).