UCD 1 Derry City 2:MARK FARREN maintained his scoring streak against UCD as Derry beat the Students for the third time this season to keep themselves two points behind third-placed Cork City in the table.
It was a damaging sixth defeat in eight games for UCD who drop back into the bottom three for the first time in six weeks.
Farren had scored in Derry's previous wins over College, and he did it again for Stephen Kenny's side to break the deadlock on 55 minutes.
Niall McGinn's cross was flicked on by Sammy Morrow and Farren lost his marker to nip in and side-foot past Matt Gregg for his eighth goal of the season.
Derry doubled their lead with a superb strike from Kevin Deery on 68 minutes. McGinn again was involved setting up the midfielder with Deery steadying himself to rifle a shot from outside that arrowed past Gregg into the bottom left corner.
UCD hit back to set up a grandstand finish when substitute Greg Bolger burst though one-on-one with Ger Doherty to lift the ball to the roof of the net, but Derry held on for a big three points.
UCD: Gregg; Mahon (Ward, 83 mins), McNally, McMillan, Kenna; McWalter, King (McFaul, 73 mins), Duggan (Bolger, 73 mins), Fitzgerald; Meenan, Purcell.
DERRY CITY: Doherty; McCallion, Delaney, Hutton, Gray; McGlynn, Deery, Higgins (Molloy, 85 mins), McGinn; Morrow (Stewart, 76 mins), Farren (McHugh, 76 mins).
Referee: Ian Stokes (Dublin).
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)