Three goals in eight minutes after the break turned a tense evening into a rout for Derry City. Bohemians had arrived with the better recent form, but James Clarke and his team produced their best performance of the season when it mattered most. It was also Derry's final game at the Find Insurance Celtic Park.
Clarke set the tone after the break
Clarke haunted his former club, scored twice and was then denied the chance to finish a hat-trick when he missed a penalty on 80 minutes. That sequence summed up the second half, because Derry did not just edge in front, they blew the game open in a short spell that Bohemians never recovered from.
The win was Derry's first in eight matches, which gives the result a bit more weight than the scoreline alone. Derry had gone five league and European matches without a win before this, so the second-half burst looked less like a lucky swing and more like a release after a difficult run.
Tiernan Lynch will take the points, but the bigger gain is how sharp Derry looked going forward. Three goals in eight minutes is the kind of surge that changes a night quickly, and it is the clearest reason this was treated as their season's best display.
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