With one side's sights fixed firmly on the championship, the other's on a place in the Europe, neither manager was left with much to cheer about by last night's Dublin derby at Dalymount Park. A case of a point apiece for the participants and two sets of losers come the final whistle.

St Patrick's Athletic have, of course, been a little out of sorts lately. Before their cup replay win on Monday night they had drawn three and lost one of their last four outings and two points from their last three league outings had allowed Shelbourne - at one time apparently left for dead in second place - to overhaul them after the last round of games on goal difference.

Central to the slump has been a severe decline in the form of the back four from where Willie Burke has been lost to injury and his team-mates have been brought firmly down to earth from a point when, at one stage, they had conceded just one goal in 10 league outings.

Last night they looked shaky from the early stages, with all of the home side's best chances in the first quarter of the game arising out of a chronic inability of the St Patrick's defence to get the ball safely away and several after that thrown up from situations that barely cost Colin Hawkins and Packie Lynch a second thought a few short weeks ago.

Trevor Wood came to the rescue on the only occasion when indecision truly seemed likely to descend into debacle but the visitors ended up having to draw so many men back to shore up their defences that their own moves forward were necessarily reliant on the pace of Martin Reilly and Trevor Molloy breaking from very deep positions with not much support. That suited Turlough O'Connor's men just fine.

One such sprint did come close to paying dividends. Eoin Mullen attempted to cut out Molloy's ball for Ian Gilzean but succeeded instead in wrong footing his goalkeeper, who did well to prevent the ball from crossing the line for a corner just wide of the left hand upright. That, and a long free by Dave Campbell which Mullen misjudged and Reilly met with a misplaced chip, was as good as it got for the St Patrick's in the opening period.

In the centre of the field Peter Hanrahan and, more especially, Paul Doolin were having a profitable evening with the former Derry player doing what he likes to do best, get forward and worrying defenders around the edge of the area. For all the menace of his presence in the last third of the pitch, though, Wood had surprisingly little to do. The home side's build-up work was always neat but their finishing let them down before and after the break.

Derek Swan looked certain to score five minutes into the second period but sliced his shot before Hawkins headed off the line. Not long afterwards Hanrahan forced Wood into a parry which Mooney caught up with too wide and close to the line to make much of.

Sensing, perhaps, that it was one of those nights when they could live dangerously at the back and live to tell the tale, St Patrick's then began to push out with greater conviction. The bulk of the chances were still being created at Wood's end of the pitch but Dave Henderson could count himself lucky in the 74th minute when Martin Reilly chose to shoot at the approaching keeper rather than feed Ian Gilzean out to his left after Eddie Gormley had done the clever stuff some 30 yards out on the right.

Molloy too had a couple of opportunities but neither set of strikers seemed keen to break a deadlock that tightened its grip over the closing stages. The upshot is that Shelbourne go to Sligo this afternoon with the chance to go two points clear, a prospect that was unthinkable a month ago.

Bohemians, meanwhile, have made their task of finishing in the top four and, they hope, qualifying for Europe more difficult by recording their ninth draw of the league campaign. Only their opponents last night have lost less games than them and only they themselves seem capable of regularly depriving them of victory.

Bohemians: Henderson; Broughan, O'Driscoll, Mullen, O'Connor; McGrath, Doolin, Hanrahan, Mooney; Swan, Lawlor. Subs: J Hanrahan for Doolin (76 mins); Markey and Ryan for Lawlor and Swan (83 mins).

St Patrick's Ath: Wood; Campbell, Lynch, Hawkins, Doyle; Reilly, Morgan, Gormley, Croly; Gilzean, Molloy. Subs: Devereux and Long for Molloy and Croly (68 mins).

Referee: J McDermott (Dublin).

Ian Butterworth, the 33-year-old former Norwich City player, will take up his new job as playermanager of Cobh Ramblers on Monday. Cobh chairman John O'Rourke said last night that Butterworth's contract that would run until the end of next season.

Butterworth made more than 300 first-team appearances for Norwich in a 10-year career with them and he was club skipper from 1989 to 1994.