SOCCER:SHAMROCK Rovers manager Michael O'Neill reckoned his side's Champions League qualifying tie with Copenhagen is poised 60-40 in favour of the Danes with next Tuesday's game in Tallaght still to come. But the Northerner insisted there were plenty of reasons to be upbeat after his side's display at the Parken Stadium last night.

“To be fair, they’ll fancy their chances of scoring again in Tallaght, which would leave us needing three. But I think there were an awful lot of encouraging things out there tonight,” he said.

“We’re under no illusions about the scale of the task we face in the second leg, but I think that the longer it stays as it is back in Dublin then the better our chances of getting through become.

“Obviously I was disappointed with the nature of the goal we conceded, even if the second ball into the box after the corner was excellent. What mattered after that, though, was how the team reacted, and I don’t think they could have reacted any better.

“We defended valiantly when we needed to,” he continued, “and created a few good chances of our own. I think we must have got 15 to 20 crosses into their box not counting set-pieces and we asked questions of them with every single one.

“I’m delighted with the performance, I thought we were excellent, and yet there’s a niggling disappointment that we lost the game and didn’t get an away goal.”

O’Neill praised his players in every area and observed that Ryan Thompson had “made key saves at key moments for us”. He hopes the knee ligament damage suffered by Ken Oman late in the game will not keep him out of the second leg.