Derry City skipper Eoin Toal wary of St Patrick's Athletic

While the Brandywell men travel to champions Shamrock Rovers this Friday evening, the City skipper is only focusing on the Saints and expecting a tough test against Tim Clancy's side.

Although the Candy Stripes secured an impressive 4-0 win at Inchicore when the two sides last met just 10 days ago, Toal admits the Dubliners will be looking to put things right this evening.

"We played really well down there and the result showed that, but they are going to come here on Monday and it isn't going to be an easy task," he insisted.

"St Pat's are a great side, with great players. Look, it's a quick turn around so we just need to get in and focus on the St Pat's game.

"It's definitely a big week for us and Monday is the start of a new week, we'll be going out aiming for the three points and hopefully we can do that and that will then take us into Friday, but to be honest we are only worrying about Monday's game at the minute."

Toal conceded Bohemians’ Brandywell game plan had worked on Friday but said they fully deserved their share of the spoils.

The Armagh man admitted it was always going to be tough against Keith Long’s out-fit and that’s exactly how it turned out.

“It was probably a fair result,” stated the 23-year-old, “I thought in the first half we came out a bit slowly and they punished us from a counter attack, which we knew that they were going to be dangerous from. We got back into it through great work from Brando (Brandon Kavanagh) and Fats (Patrick McEleney) but it was probably a fair result.”

The former Northern Ireland U21 international, pointed out that Derry had got ‘left off the hook’ when Promise Omochere missed a glorious chance in the second half, failing to head home Tyreke Wilson’s delightful cross when unmarked inside the six yard box right in front of City goalkeeper Brian Maher.

“It was a great ball and he (Promise Omochere) got in behind me and Shane (McEleney) but thankfully didn’t score because it was a big opportunity. We got left off the hook by that one.

“But I felt we played okay at times. We can’t dwell on it too much as we have games coming thick and fast but we aren’t happy with a draw. We don’t celebrate draws because we are at home and we want to win every game here. In fact, we want to win every game we play in. The sides coming here are tough but we want to make the Brandywell as hard as we can for them.

“It just didn’t work tonight but we move on. We were always expecting a tough game off Bohemians, because they are always hard to break down and difficult to play against.

“They came up here with a game plan and it worked because their counter attacks were brilliant.”