AIRTRICITY LEAGUE PREMIER DIVISION St Patrick's Athletic 1 Sligo Rovers 0:IT MAY not have been the romp the home crowd was hoping for after the two cup wins against Sligo last week but St Patrick's Athletic maintained their winning habit at Richmond Park last night to keep their noses in front at the top of the Premier Division table.

Once again, their success was built on the rock-solid foundation of their tireless efforts at the back.

It was a wonderful second-half strike by David McAllister that separated the sides at the final whistle, though, with the midfielder’s 25-yard goal injecting a lot of life into the contest through the last half hour and helping to sustain the sense of optimism that has swept through Inchicore over the past two months.

Sligo started with just five of the players who had lined out for the kick-off here a couple of weeks back. Paul Cook admitted to having expected too much of fringe squad members that night with the club’s chances of making it to the final of the Setanta Cup final all but effectively surrendered before the return leg.

This time things were far more even. The visitors held their own in most departments and Joseph Ndo, making his debut against one of his former clubs, looked anxious to make an impact from the space between the midfield and lone striker, Pádraig Amond.

Well rested while problems renewing his work permit were resolved over the last few weeks, the former Cameroon international showed signs of adding a little more creative spark to Cook’s attack.

Quite what might be done to tighten things up at the back for Rovers is another matter, though.

True, they never looked like haemorrhaging goals at anything like the rate they did last Tuesday week, but to concede 12 in five games since the scoreless draw at Dalymount Park late last month is to ask rather a lot of your strikers.

Last night might be taken as some sort of improvement but a brief nap still ended up costing them dearly.

For the hosts, on the other hand, the win represented a seventh clean sheet in nine league outings with Conor Kenna and company conceding just twice in the first full round of games.

Ndo may have been the chief threat to them on this occasion with the former Bohemians and Shelbourne player dropping deep in order to influence his side’s build-ups, distributing the ball well and even going close to opening the scoring when his early curling shot narrowly went over the right hand angle of Gary Rogers’s goal.

But, for the most part, the hosts looked fairly secure around their own area. Rovers, to be fair, mainly restricted their opponents to shots from distance too. But Paul Byrne looked a lively threat, even from a long way out, more than once with Richard Brush doing particularly well to push away his low-driven effort midway through the second half.

There was nothing Brush could do about McAllister’s goal after 57 minutes, though, with the midfielder cutting in from the right and unleashing a left-footed shot that clipped the underside of the crossbar as it flew in.

The hosts had a couple of chances to double their lead late on but Brush kept Sligo in it while Richie Ryan gave the home fans a fright late on with a shot that went past the wrong side of the post.

ST PATRICK'S ATHLETIC: Rogers; Pender, Guthrie, Kenna, Lynch; Guy (Cash, 83 mins), Byrne, Mulcahy, McAllister; P Byrne (Williams, 75 mins), Faherty (Sinnott 90).

SLIGO ROVERS: Brush; Ventre, Peers, Almeida (Whelan, 26 mins), Keane; Dillon (Doyle, 69 mins), Doninger, Ryan, McCabe (O'Grady, 80 mins); Ndo; Amond.

Referee: A Kelly(Cork).