After last season's dismal campaign, the ambitions are fairly low key this year up the Brandywell. Asked about the prospects City manager Felix Healy says that his side's chances of winning the league are good as anybody else's but the club's real targets are far more realistic - further consolidation off the pitch, a more respectable showing on it.

Just how they'll fare over the coming months was hard to gauge from this, a game they did well in through the opening period, but one which St Patrick's Athletic deservedly won thanks to a fine Ian Gilzean strike five minutes after the break.

The champions, of course, are talking with somewhat more conviction about retaining their title and, though he wasn't getting any more carried away than usual, Pat Dolan was clearly happy that they'd taken the first tentative steps of the new campaign without any signs of faltering.

"It's only the first game of the season," he said afterwards, "but the points count as much in the first game as they do in the last and we all saw how much they counted in the last one last year."

His pleasure was clearly increased by the source of the goal. That victory in Kilkenny back at the start of May delivered a knock-out blow in Dolan's title bout with Damien Richardson, but even after his rival has departed the Shelbourne fold there remains a bit of needle, a fact brought into the open over the past week by a newspaper article in which Richardson appeared to be dismissive of Gilzean's chances of repeating his form of last year when his league goal tally ran into double figures.

"He was written off as a crock during the week and it's true that he defies medical science just to get out there on the field each week," said Dolan.

Healy, in contrast, was far from proud, having seen his side create a string of decent chances to take the lead in the first half, most coming thanks to Greg O'Dowd's work down the right and the best couple drawing fine stops from Trevor Wood.

His side, he observed ruefully, had lacked the "moral courage" to fight their way back into a game once they had gone behind to a team, he added, who are the "best in the business at killing a match off once they get themselves into a position like that".

Just who he blamed the most for the defeat wasn't made entirely clear but the strike force of Liam Coyle and new boy Michael McHugh could hardly have been expected to do much more with the possession they got, while Sean Hargan on the left and Gary Beckett through the centre looked a little more culpable during a disappointing last half-hour.

Stuart Gauld, recently returned from Finn Harps, must shoulder a good deal of responsibility for the goal too, the veteran defender failing to close down Gilzean after Trevor Croly's throw on the right had been turned inside by Martin Reilly. The shot, lobbed from just outside the angle, had the look of one that could have gone anywhere but, as it happened, it soared into the top-left corner, something Tony O'Dowd stood and watched helplessly without even making a move.

Had Leon Braithwaite's finishing been better, the Dubliners could have doubled the lead late in the game but there was little urgency about the situation for, once behind, Derry rarely threatened an equaliser.

Coyle did push McHugh clear through with 20 minutes left, but then, after he had rounded Wood, he was frustrated by Stephen McGuinness, who popped up just in time to drive to ball to safety.

Derry City: O'Dowd; Doherty, Curran, Gauld, Kelly (McCaul 80); O'Dowd, Hegarty, Beckett, Hargan; McHugh, L Coyle.

St Patrick's Athletic: Wood; Croly, Lynch (Long 54), McGuinness, Doyle; Gormley, Osam, Russell (Campbell 76); Reilly, Gilzean, Molloy (Braithwaite 26).

Referee: J McDermott (Dublin)