Drogheda United 'will try our best' to do Derry City a favour when they travel to Shamrock Rovers

​The Boynesiders put a spanner in the works for Ruaidhri Higgins side who came unstuck at Weavers Park on Friday night - a damaging scoreless draw which all but rules them out of the title race.

The Hoops needed to win just twice in their final four matches to clinch a four title in a row.

No one would have predicted it would turn out so comfortable for the Hoops in the end having struggled for form this campaign.

However, they owe a little thanks to Drogheda who have taken points off their nearest rivals in the past couple of weeks with a 2-1 win over St Pat's and now a 0-0 draw with Derry.

Next up is a trip to Tallaght on October 20th on the night Derry host Shelbourne and despite Friday's point being enough to rubber stamp safety, Doherty says they will go to south Dublin with the intention of another upset.

"Look, we'll try to," he said. "I'm sure there's a lot of Shamrock Rovers people happy with us over the last couple of weeks beating Pats and taking a point off Derry.

"We'll try our best. Obviously Conor Keely because of tonight is suspended and whatever but it's two weeks away. We'll look forward to it.

"We'll rest up. To go to Tallaght, it will be a big game for Rovers but it's great we looked after ourselves and didn't have to rely on anyone else."

Doherty was delighted with the performance of his players against Derry and took great satisfaction in securing safety with three games to go, bearing in mind they were written off as relegation candidates before a ball was kicked this year.

"Brilliant," he said of the result. "I know we said before the game we needed a point but I think we were probably fairly safe.

"Again, that's without Ryan Brennan, without Dayle Rooney, and the lads who have come in and even the subs who have come on, the performance was excellent.

"I think we should win it in the end. They've had lots of balls in the box and all that type of stuff and loads of set-pieces and loads of corners but we had an unbelievable chance and Darragh Markey unfortunately did his hamstring we think, he was cramping up but that just shows the effort we’ve put in.

"The lads were fantastic. It was our goal at the start of the year to stay up and we did comfortably enough. Everyone was tipping us to be battling with UCD.

"People think I'm just saying that as motivation, I'm not! Have a look back. Look back at every newspaper, every podcast, every site - they were. It was ninth, tenth, ninth tenth (predictions).

"One of our players had on their phone the other day screenshots of all of them (predictions) and it just goes to show you.

"It's not that we wanted to prove people wrong but it just shows you what was expected of us and what the lads have done.

"Bearing in mind, I can't think of another squad in the league that's lost four or five first team players over the season. My players and my staff deserve massive credit.

"I'm just so delighted that we can say we're safe now because it's been put to me so many times but we are now."