Sligo secure place in top flight with draw

National League, First Division: Athlone Town may not quite have done their bit to enhance the party atmosphere at the Showgrounds on Saturday night but the resilience of the first division's bottom club made little difference in the end as Sligo Rovers took the point they required from a tough game to claim top spot and automatic promotion back to the top flight.

Seán Flannery, Ian Rossiter and Paul McTiernan all went close to grabbing the goal that would have ensured that Rovers secured their target by way of a win but the visitors frustrated both their opponents and the 5,000 or so supporters who had turned out to see the game all the way to the final whistle.

"It was a frustrating game," said Rovers boss Seán Connor afterwards, "just the sort that makes me happy we won't be playing in the first division next year but the reason we won promotion was because we could grind out results and the fact that that was our 16th clean sheet of the campaign speaks volumes about the way the lads have performed this year.

"The only thing I promised them at the start of the campaign," he added, "was that if they worked hard for me and I'd help them to become champions and I'm delighted for them now because they did everything I asked of them.

"I'm thrilled myself because it's the first trophy of my career - I aim to make sure it's not the last - and I'm happy for all of the fans, I just hope that what we saw tonight is the sort of support we'll be able to count on in the Premier Division next year."

Rovers skipper Michael McNamara, meanwhile, was overwhelmed after the game both by the team's achievement and by the reaction of the supporters but, he admitted, the result of the game had been a slight disappointment.

"It's unbelievable," he said. "The emotion of it all has exceeded all of my expectations. It's very, very special and what matters to us was getting the point we needed to go up although ideally we would have liked to have won it 1-0 or 2-0. We got what we had to, though, and it's a really, really good feeling now."

In the night's other key games, Dublin City leapfrogged Cobh Ramblers to move into the play-off spot with one round of matches to play after a comprehensive defeat of Monaghan United while Cobh drew at Dundalk.

Alan Kelly, David Freeman, Alan Mulcahy, Ben Whelehan and Ray Scully were all on the mark for Dublin City, who now lead Ramblers by a single point, as they beat Monaghan 5-1.

A win at Athlone next weekend will now guarantee the northside club a place in the play-offs where the opposition would be Shamrock Rovers, a team managed of course, by City's former boss and Dermot Keely's old adversary Roddy Collins.

For Cobh the goalless draw at Oriel Park will have come as a severe blow but the hosts suffered another significant setback after the game when manager Jim Gannon informed the board that he was resigning from the position.

Gannon's position had been in doubt since last week when the club's vice-chairman, Tom Baldwin, a strong supporter of the manager, and its chief executive Seán Connolly both departed and it subsequently emerged that Gannon has taken a part-time post with his former club Stockport County.

On Saturday evening, however, Gannon cited comments made by club officials to the local media during the week which, he clearly felt, had been unreasonably critical of him as having prompted his decision to go.

Not for the first time, Tommy Connolly will step in to take charge of the team for the last game of the season, away to Monaghan next weekend.