Cork City's heaviest defeat of the season led to heightened rumours about the future of their manager, Derek Mountfield, at Turner's Cross.

Cork were trailing 0-3 at halftime when the directors adjourned to the boardroom for the second half. Their session took place amid rumours the former Everton and Aston Villa defender had been asked to resign in mid-week.

A disheartened Mountfield - who has seen Cork lose three of four consecutive home matches in the past month - refused to get involved in speculation about his future, confining his reaction to, "I don't want to discuss that now."

After the game St Patrick's manager Pat Dolan offered his support to Mountfield when he said: "We gave a very impressive performance. But while I was continually looking for more goals during the match, immediately afterwards I had to feel for Derek Mountfield. He is a good man and given time he will get things right here."

Mountfield was forced to send out a young team without five of his most experienced players because of injury - Declan Daly, Derek Coughlan, Fergie O'Donoghue, Colin O'Brien and Patsy Freyne.

They struggled from the start and two goals in a 90-second spell from the 19th minute effectively settled the issue. Gerard McCarthy scored the opening goal and this was followed by an own-goal when Stephen Napier deflected a freekick from Martin Russell into his own net.

Cork could not cope with Russell's accurate free-kicks and the other two goals also resulted from his set-pieces. Stephen McGuinness headed in a free-kick from the left wing two minutes into injury time of the first half and McCarthy headed the fourth and his own second after McGuinness had headed on yet another free-kick in the 69th minute.

Cork had to wait until the 90th minute for Pat Morley to force goalkeeper Seamus Kelly to make a good save and they finished with only 10-men after Greg O'Halloran had been booked for a second time seven minutes from time.

Cork City: Devine; O'Halloran, O'Rourke, Napier, Horgan; Tynan (Caulfield 61 mins), Gaughan (Cotter 46 mins), Herrick, Cahill; Morley, Mulligan.

St Patrick's Athletic: S Kelly; Croly, Foley, S McGuinness, Burke; R McGuinness, Livingstone (Holt 83 mins), Griffin, Russell (Drew 83 mins); L Kelly (Quinn 80 mins), McCarthy.

Referee: H Byrne (Dublin).