Brian Maher warns rivals Derry City still has 'levels to go' after table-topping win

​The City keeper, who flew off with the Ireland senior team for a four day training camp in Bristol on Monday morning, was delighted to hear the emphatic win over the Students sent them above rivals Shamrock Rovers, describing the news as 'a bonus'.

"It's a boost, a bonus," he said afterwards. "It's a game you'd expect them (Rovers) to win and even at 2-1 down you're still waiting for them to come back.

"There's no easy games in this league. We saw that in Drogheda ourselves and Drogheda have gone down there and got the win.

"It's a bonus for us. We're going in top of the league now and we'll focus on Sligo. We didn't do that enough last year (winning three in a week) and it was something the gaffer was stressing as well.

"We didn't win enough Friday, Monday, Friday so it's nice to get a nine point week and the little bonus in the end is we're top of the league."

It continued a fantastic run of results for the Candy Stripes who made it six wins from seven but Maher isn't getting carried away with league positions just yet.

"No trophies are getting handed out in May," he pointed out. "It's a bit of a bonus to be top. I think we were probably expecting to come in and hear that they won. We'll take it.

"As I said, it's still really early days and we're plenty of games away from even being at the business end but we need to keep winning games and see where it takes us."

The Dubliner, who previously oversaw three straight clean sheets, was disappointed to let that record slip on Friday as defender Adam Wells fired into the net from close range in the second half.

However, he produced a superb double save to deny the visitors from getting back into a game they should never have been in such was Derry's dominance.

"I'm disappointed to let one in especially when we're 3-0 up and cruising. It's very easy to let the standards drop a little bit and we probably got caught with that a little bit and gave away a sloppy goal.

"We've set higher standards than that. We're happy with putting a team away like that but we still know there's levels to go."

Maher prevented UCD from making it 3-2 and therefore avoiding a potentially nervous final 10 minutes.

"It's something we've been working on, like I said against Drogheda, turning in off cutbacks.

"I'm happy to make a save because if it goes in 3-2 we're probably under the cosh a little bit. I think as a team we were probably disappointed to let ourselves get into that position,

"Thankfully it stayed out and we got another goal and it was probably comfortable after that.

"All in all we've won the game and we've gone top of the league so bigger picture stuff, it's a great night for us."