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Just doing a bit of surfing here, looking for a Serbian take on things, anyone able to get a google translate on these, not happening for me for some reason.
http://www.danas.rs/danasrs/sport/fu...news_id=222303
http://www.danas.rs/danasrs/sport/fu...news_id=222357
Already, their 14-0 win against Drogheda has been brought up. Must happen every time they play Irish opposition so.Quote:
Originally Posted by freewheel30
http://www.dundalkfc.com/history/dun...am-dundalk-812http://www.dundalkfc.com/history/dundalk-fc-in-europe/1981-european-cup-winners-cup-tottenham-hotspur
Dundalk played Spurs in the cup winners cup in 1981.Trouble @ Oriel according to the wise one that is my Da .Just throwing it in like :)
I don't think so. More to do with not able to play teams from the same countries etc.Quote:
Originally Posted by christo
Most euro games: Ollie Cahill (second is Stuey Byrne) I'm fairly sure.Quote:
Originally Posted by dfx-
Great reaction from him alright tho. Can't wait for the group games now - hope they can expand Talaght & keep them at home.
:ball:
Big 'arry in todays Star:
Quote:
Shamrock Rovers? Ah fantastic!
Credit to Shamrock Rovers and we look forward to going there.
Dublin is it? Lovely, we'll have a weekend in Dublin
Mostly positive for Rovers, saying how they were set up well, that they took their chances, that Partizan were outplayed. O'Nil (ironic or what) asked for bravery and got it. Stanojevic believes they made the same mistakes as against Genk and he's ashamed of that. Sullivan's goal was phenomenal - look up "parni valjak".Quote:
Originally Posted by freewheel30
Comments are mostly taking about getting rid of dead wood. How the Serbian league is crap etc.
Pat Sullivan's goal was the Fox™ Soccer Report™ Sylvania™ High Performance™ Moment of the Day™ the other eve:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrhdbkuyeRo
http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...y-2859840.html
What have Celtic, Rangers, Roma, Sevilla, Spartak Moscow and Panathinaikos got in common? They're not as good as Shamrock Rovers.
Or at least they weren't on Thursday night when, as the aforementioned giants exited the Europa League, the Hoops produced one of the gutsiest, most stirring performances you're ever likely to see from an Irish team in any sport to win 2-1 away to Partizan Belgrade and qualify for the competition's group stages.
It was a night when you could feel history being made, paradigms shifting and moulds breaking. There was a genuinely epic feel about the performance. After a 1-1 draw in Tallaght, they were given little chance of progressing and when they fell behind in the 34th minute it looked as though the script was following predictable lines.
But though they frequently bent and buckled under the Belgrade onslaught, Hoops never broke and from the moment that Pat Sullivan equalised in the 58th minute with a volley which would have graced any league in the world, you could see the realisation that the unlikely had become possible flooding through them. There was something moving about the sight of a League of Ireland team giving as good as they got in a big European stadium as the likes of their great Grobbelaarian goalkeeper Ryan Thompson, centre-back colossus Craig Sives, future Irish international left-back Enda Stephens, tireless anchor man Stephen Rice and super sub Steven O'Donnell, who slotted home the winning penalty in the second period of extra-time, reached heights they may not even have suspected they were capable of themselves, miraculously seeming to grow stronger as the game moved into extra-time with the temperature up in the 30s.
Excuse me. I'll be back in a minute. Thanks.
You know what? That humble pie is pretty tasty. Which is just as well considering that a couple of weeks ago I bemoaned the fact that European football was a dead end for the league given that our teams hadn't a hope of qualifying for the grooup stages. In my defence, Hoops manager Michael O'Neill probably felt the same way, as he admitted after the victory that he'd felt the game was a bridge too far for his team. As he pointed out, one player on the Partizan team was earning as much as the combined wage bill of his own side.
This time last year the Serbian champions were knocking Anderlecht out of the Champions League. Two years ago, they beat that year's eventual champions Shakhtar Donetsk in the group stages of the Europa League. Their team on Thursday contained five players who have played at full international level for Serbia. With their 32,000 capacity stadium they seemed to inhabit a different footballing world from Shamrock Rovers. Turns out they didn't.
Thursday was an epochal night not just for Shamrock Rovers but for the League of Ireland. Because while the Hoops are an excellent side, they're not some kind of super team standing head and shoulders above their local rivals. At the moment they're engaged in a thrilling four-way joust for the league title with Derry City, Sligo Rovers and St Patrick's Athletic.
And Thursday's win did not come completely out of the blue. In 2008, a last-minute missed sitter stopped Drogheda United from knocking out Dynamo Kiev who subsequently reached the Europa League semi-finals. The following year only an 87th-minute goal prevented Bohemians from advancing at the expense of a Casino Salzburg team who went on to top their Europa League group, scoring double wins over Lazio and Villarreal in the process. Even this season Sligo Rovers will look back ruefully on the two disallowed goals in their Europa League away first leg against the very strong Ukrainian side Vorskla Poltava, who won 2-0 on aggregate.
But knocking on the door is one thing, breaking it down is another. And while the victory over Partizan was founded on hard work and courage, the difference between gallant defeat and famous victory was two moments of sublime quality. Gary McCabe's superb dribble through the visiting defence in the home leg, and Sullivan's rocket in Belgrade, were the kind of goals which would be shown round the world if they came from one of Europe's elite leagues. And what they did was confirm something which every League of Ireland fan knows -- that there is no shortage of quality in our league and that our faith in the game is repaid every season by transcendent moments of skill. Sullivan's goal was great but it was far from unique. There are plenty of other players in the League who can do, and have done, something similar.
This is worth stressing because one of the great puzzles of Irish sport is the obsession so many people have with pouring scorn on the League of Ireland. You can forgive apathy; if you don't want to watch domestic soccer, fair enough, you're missing out but it's your choice. But it's the antipathy which makes no sense, the constant urge to denigrate a league you don't even watch. The League of Ireland is a bit like Socialism. It mightn't have many supporters these days but for its enemies any number is too much. Perhaps it's something to do with a guilty conscience.
That's why you end up with nonsense notions like the idea, touted as the acme of progressive thinking, a couple of years back that the League's salvation lay in a union with the Irish League. In reality, the Irish League had nothing to offer the League of Ireland because it operates at a much, much lower level. They are ranked 20 places below us in Europe which means the Irish League bears the same relationship to the League of Ireland as our league does to the Portuguese League. This kind of guff comes about because there's an idea that the League of Ireland is terminally ill. But Thursday's triumph follows on the heels of an FAI Cup final which attracted 36,000 fans to the Aviva Stadium. So it's time people stopped condescending to Irish football. Because while Shamrock Rovers will be flying the flag for the League of Ireland in the Europa League group stages, the Scottish
League won't be represented at all. Chances are that Shamrock Rovers might well have beaten either Celtic or Rangers. And that Derry, Sligo and St Pat's would have done better at home to Spurs than the Hearts side which lost 5-0.
Yet the Scottish League is treated with seriousness in the Irish media, as though there are matters of great footballing importance decided there. In reality, it has far more in common with the League of Ireland than it has with the Premier League. The crowds who flock to watch Old Firm games in the nation's pubs would scoff at the idea that they might see better football from Shamrock Rovers and Derry City. But they'd be wrong to do so.
The recession has affected the League of Ireland, but not profoundly because it almost seemed to stand at one remove from the Celtic Tiger era. There was no sport less attuned to the zeitgeist of those money-worshipping days than the League of Ireland, with its lack of corporate boxes, its unashamedly working-class roots, its stubborn refusal to agree that what Irish football really needed was a Premier League franchise which would wipe out Shamrock Rovers and all the other clubs like them, clubs whose traditions are no less valued by their fans than those of the country's GAA or rugby teams. But the League of Ireland abides. And now Shamrock Rovers have taken it on to the big stage.
It is a victory for Michael O'Neill and everyone else at the great club. But it is also a victory for anyone who's soldiered through the years at Terryland Park, St Mel's, Dalymount, The Showgrounds, Turner's Cross and all the other defiant redoubts of the little league that can.
We are no mean people.
Not a bad article. Good point in particular about other clubs being at the same level as Shams.
Conclusion was waffle - Fingal, Shels up til 2007, Bohs, Derry, Cork etc were not at 'one remove from the Celtic Tiger era' in how they threw money at wages rather than investment in facilities, but I get his point - he's talking about the culture.
Grobbelaerian paradigm shifts in the zetigeist? Jaysus, has he swallowed a first year Sociology essay?
First time on here since it happened, so just want to say thanks for all the messages of goodwill and support from fellow League of Ireland fans on here. This victory is for all of us not just Rovers. Still can't get over all that's happened the last few days, unbelievable stuff.
Jaysus that Eamon Sweeny is AWFUL.
I haven't had a chance to add my congratulations to Rovers. Well done. I'm still buzzing over it especially reading the papers finally praising the League of ireland and its fans and TV and radio all talking about proper Irish football for once. I'll admit I've punched the air a couple of times over the weekend (must be a contagious Rovers thing - I'll be punching innocent grannies next!). I know a lot of Rovers fans from Ringsend that I'm particularly pleased for. I recall giving a donation to Rovers back in 2005. Now that you're getting your millions, can I've me money back please???
Fair play to them. I certainly wouldn't have predicted it at half time in the first leg. Not even the Shels players would've had the foresight to back Rovers at that stage. To get through 120 minutes in intense heat with a dodgy ref and still push on for the winning goal is incredible. I kind of felt once it went to extra time that they had done the league proud, but would come up just short in the end like so many close calls in the past.
Actually, going back to 2005, I remember Roddy doing a piece in whatever rag he was with just after he was sacked saying the 400 Club hadn't a clue what they were doing and would run the club into the ground. And he was on a live match on RTE a couple of years ago saying the league should pull out of European football altogether. What a tool. Well done Rovers for making the breakthrough. Alan Mannus and James Chambers must be regretting taking a step down into Scottish football!
On t'internet for first time since history was made - delighted for Shams, congrats, I'm always proud to be a LOI fan, but events like Thursday night show others exactly why. Loving the clowns like Vincent Hogan in the Indo today suddenly realising there is a domestic league out there.
Are you sure? I think that is a disgrace. TV3 are the last station who should be showing Rovers. They have no interest in Irish football whatsoever? Why didn't they show the game last week or any other games?Quote:
Originally Posted by Trainee
Tv3 did show the game last week......
plus they have the rights for the UEFA Europa League in Ireland, they have done for years. RTÉ weren't interested in it.
TV3 Should not be confused with 3e which is only available on cable or sattelite.Quote:
Originally Posted by El-Pietro
I was out of the country last week, I thought it was Setanta Ireland that showed the game last Thursday?Quote:
Originally Posted by El-Pietro
Quote:
Originally Posted by El-Pietro
It was Setanta who showed the game, not TV3.Quote:
Originally Posted by legendz
Pretty sure I posted this before but 3e is available on terrestrial TV via a regular TV aerial on Saorview. It is not just a cable/satellite station. As the host broadcaster for the Europa League in Ireland, TV3 are obliged to cover the games in Ireland in order to provide pictures to the rest of Europe for highlights shows, etc. It makes sense for them to show the Shamrock Rovers games therefore. Whether they go with 3e or TV3 for the games is their call really but hopefully they get in some League of Ireland men for the coverage instead of Phil Babb I think it was on their Europa League last year.Quote:
Originally Posted by bullit