Aplogies if this has been posted already, a good read though.
Ireland hoping for lottery luck
Steve Bradley
You could be forgiven for thinking that luck is on the side of the Irish in all things European this week.
Glen Crowe: Irish international will lead the line for the 'gaelacticos'. (MarkThompson/GettyImages)
On Saturday night, a 46 year-old mother of six from Limerick beat gigantic odds to scoop Europe's biggest ever lottery haul - picking-up €113m in a competition that had proven winner-less for 10 consecutive weeks.
In the same draw, a Dublin man was one of a select group of 9 additional people across Europe to pick-up a 2nd prize of €680,000 - falling only one number short of the main bounty himself.
Meanwhile, the month of August is creating a daily lottery-esque windfall for the business people of Cork, as the city receives record numbers of tourists due to its status as 2005 European City of Culture.
Even for a nation considered blessed with innate good fortune, one suspects that Lady Luck herself may have chosen to spend her European vacation in Ireland this summer.
For Irish soccer fans, there was a similar expectation of providence in European affairs last week.
Hopes were high that - for the first time ever - this season would see all 3 Irish teams in UEFA competitions advance to their respective second rounds.
And justifiably so. One of the key motivations behind the Republic's Eircom League switching to a Summer season 3 years ago was a desire for its teams to be better-placed for European progression.
This decision has surprised many by bearing fruits almost immediately - last year Cork City became the first Irish side in 25 years to make it through 2 rounds of European competition.
They advanced to the quarter-finals of the InterToto cup, beating Malmo and Nijmegen en route and held Nantes to a draw before finally going out courtesy of a defeat in France.
Cork City proved to be the surprise package of the 2004 InterToto cup tournament - but their time in the limelight lasted only a matter of weeks before they were upstaged by rivals Shelbourne's European heroics.
The Dubliners advanced to the 3rd round of the Champions League - knocking out Hadjuk Split en-route and holding Deportivo to a draw before going down 3-0 in Spain. Their reward was a slot in the 3rd round of the UEFA Cup, where they held French club FC Lille to a 2-2 draw in Dublin before bowing out 2-0 in France.
This genuine progress of Eircom League clubs in European competition in 2004 combined with a degree of luck in the draw for the 2005 competitions to give Irish football fans a suspicion that this year could offer yet more opportunity for European history.
Of the 3 opposition teams drawn from the hat, two (Glentoran and Carmarthen) were considered very beatable, whilst the other (FK Ekranas) was simply an unknown quantity. Champions League entrants Shelbourne had the pairing with Northern Irish League winners Glentoran, and made light work of the task 2 weeks ago by completing a 6-2 rout of the Belfast team.
Their reward was a second round pairing with Romanian champions Steaua Bucharest, against whom they proved good value for their 0-0 second round first-leg draw in Dublin last Wednesday.
With Shelbourne already successfully past the first qualification hurdle, Irish footballing eyes turned to UEFA cup entrants Cork City and Longford Town last Thursday to see if they could make it a first-ever grand slam for the Eircom League. Both Cork and Longford took to the field for their second leg games as hot favourites for progression.
Cork had already banked a strong 2-0 away victory over unknown Lithuanian side FK Ekranas 2 weeks earlier, whilst Longford Town travelled to Wales to face Welsh Cup runners-up Carmarthen with a similar 2-0 lead from their home game.
However, 28th July was to prove a night when Lady Luck deserted the Irish clubs in Europe. Cork City went down to a 1-0 defeat at home, though still managed to progress to the second round on a 2-1 aggregate scoreline. However - the real shock of the night was to come in mid-Wales.
Playing 200 miles from home at the ground of Welsh rivals Newton FC, Carmarthen Town needed to score at least 3 unanswered goals to over-turn their first-leg deficit.
Buoyed up by their 2-0 lead, Longford fans expectantly travelled to the game in large numbers, heavily outnumbering the 'home' supporters. At half-time all seemed to be running according to plan for the Irish. The score stood at 1-1 - meaning Carmarthen would need to end the game with a 4:1 victory in order to progress. A tall order for any team - particularly when you're the underdog.
Yet somehow, inexplicably, Longford Town completely failed to turn up for the second half of the game, losing on a shock 5-1 scoreline and going out 5-3 on aggregate. Rather than say that the result was unexpected - if you're a fan of conspiracy theories I'd (jokingly of course) instead recommend you to investigate if any sizeable bets had been placed on a Carmarthen win during the half-time interval, such was the degree to which Longford crumbled in the second half.
It later transpired that Lady Luck must have been wearing Welsh colours that night - rather than Irish teams making European history it would instead turn-out to be the first time ever that 2 Welsh teams progressed beyond the first round of UEFA (Rhyl also securing an aggregate victory).
And so it was for the second year running that Shelbourne and Cork City advanced to the second round of European competitions, whilst Longford Town fell at the first hurdle to unfancied opposition. To Eircom League supporters - obsessed with UEFA co-efficients and convinced of the need for European results to build the credibility of their league - it was two steps forward and one very painful step back.
“ I don't feel it was a good outcome. It was a draw but we were expecting more than this ”
— Oleg Protasov on Steau's 0-0 draw in Dublin
Wednesday, however, was an opportunity for Shelbourne to wipe the slate clean by making one giant leap forward for Irish football.
Their second round first-leg Champions League tie against Steaua Bucharest in Dublin last Wednesday saw them earn a deserved 0-0 draw against a team with a very strong European pedigree.
The result proved to be somewhat of a disappointment to new Steaua boss Oleg Protasov, who only brought his squad to Dublin on the morning of the game and went into the match declaring that his team were already '90 per cent in the third round'.
Perhaps the universal principle of 'Sod's Law' has yet to be discovered in Eastern Europe, as this time last year Croatian kingpins Hadjuk Split lined up for a second round, second leg Champions League tie against Shelbourne with an absolutely identical attitude.
They had more reason to be confident at that time, leading 3-2 after the first leg in Split. But the disrespect they showed to the Irish Champions was to prove their downfall, as they fell to a stunning 2-0 defeat at Shelbourne's hands in Dublin to go out of the competition 4-3 overall.
Whether or not Shels can add another step to the slow progression of Irish teams in Europe tonight remains to be seen.
Steaua will certainly prove a much tougher challenge away from home than Split were at this stage last year for them.
They are a stronger squad than the Croatians were, and will have the advantage of playing in front of a very partisan home crowd. Yet even with a sizeable support from the large Romanian community in Ireland at last week's game in Dublin, Steaua looked rather average and uninventive against the Irish Champions.
That was Steaua's first competitive game of the season, whilst Shelbourne should technically be much sharper at this mid-way stage of their domestic league campaign. Shelbourne will be looking to take advantage of this, and the fact that there are early signs of unrest in the Romanian ranks.
Their manager, former Soviet International Oleg Protasov - for whom the draw against Shelbourne was his first competitive game in charge of the club - faced criticism after his team threw away a 2-1 lead on Saturday to lose 3-2 to city rivals Dinamo in the Romanian Charity Shield.
That result was due in large part to Protasov's decision to use up all 3 of his subs with 30 minutes of the game remaining - followed by the inevitable injury to a key player, the necessity of playing the remainder of the game with 10 men, and the ensuing reversal of their 2-1 lead.
His open dismissal of the threat posed by Shelbourne ahead of last week's scoreless draw also lead to him eating a small serving of humble pie, pronouncing after the game that 'I don't feel it was a good outcome. It was a draw but we were expecting more than this' (Sod's Law truly does seem to have no equivalent in Eastern Europe's footballing culture). Steaua's manager is therefore under pressure very early in his career with the club, and Shelbourne hope to take advantage of this.
For their part, however, Shelbourne have also had a far from positive year to-date domestically. They were prolific in the transfer market in the run-in to the start of the new season, using the riches accrued from their European outings last year to hoover-up the best talent available in Ireland and assembling a squad of 'Gaelacticos' that appeared unbeatable on paper.
