SOCCER:HAVING MADE the dream of participation at this stage of a European competition a reality with some outstanding performances, Michael O'Neill and his men will start to find out this evening whether they should have been a little more careful about what they had wished for.
For a good many of the supporters who helped to haul the club back from the brink of extinction a few years back, just getting to see Shamrock Rovers playing at this level at Tallaght stadium will seem like quite a reward.
In the past week, though, the Dublin club’s title defence has become a good deal more complicated thanks to a home defeat by Sligo Rovers on Friday night and Monday’s draw at Inchicore. It amounted to a tough few days but Rubin Kazan, PAOK and Tottenham clearly have the potential over the next few weeks to drain O’Neill’s resources considerably further.
Somebody had the temerity yesterday to ask about the club’s prospects of progressing beyond the group stages, evidence that however much football managers and coaches like to set the bar high there is always a hack on hand to add an extra notch or two.
O’Neill wasn’t biting on that one but he did insist that neither he nor his players have come this far just to make up the numbers.
“It would be foolhardy to say we want ‘x’ mount of points,” he said. “It’s been a massive achievement for us to get here and then obviously to stage the games in Tallaght as well.
“It’s been an experience for us to be paddling furiously underneath the water just to make these things happen but, to be fair, we believe we can take points in this competition to. There’d be no point in taking part if we didn’t, given what a massive distraction it all is from our domestic situation. I believe that, particularly at home, we have a real chance to take points and we hope to prove that.”
We’ll know a little better whether he is right this evening after his side has taken on a team that has won the Russian league in two of the last three seasons.
They lie seventh in the championship – although they are only two off fourth – and their recent form is not, by their own standards, all that good with just one win in six between domestic and European competition.
Only two clubs have beaten them all season back in Russia, however, and while they may have lost to Lyon in the play-off for a place in the group stages of the Champions League they were scarcely outclassed.
Their squad certainly has an international look about it and the starting line up that Kurban Berdyev is expected to select for this evening’s game has, in addition to its Russian backbone, quality players from Argentina, Spain, Italy, Nigeria and Ecuador.
O’Neill said last night he had settled on the starting XI and recent signing Rohan Ricketts seems likely to make the cut.
Stephen Rice, who sat alongside the manager yesterday and seems likely to feature in another five man midfield, spoke of the need for the home players to maintain their concentration over the 90 minutes and he’s not wrong; momentary lapses have not been unknown when Rovers are put on the back foot and there are lingering concerns about the reliability of goalkeeper Ryan Thompson.
As the manager points out with justifiable pride, however, his players have not been humbled by anyone in Europe over the past couple of years and they have played some pretty good sides. Now they just have to show that they are learning to take such challenges in their stride.
SHAMROCK ROVERS (probable): Thompson; Sullivan, Sives, Murray, Stevens; McCormack; McCabe, Finn, Rice, Ricketts; Twigg.
RUBIN KAZAN: Ryzhikov; Kuzmin, Navas, Bocchetti, Ansaldi; Kasaev, Noboa; Martins, Ryazantsev, Natcho; Dyadyun or Valdez
REFEREE: Zsolt Szabo (Hungary).
