Quietly, and with only a fraction of the fanfare they deserve, Shamrock Rovers are bringing down the curtain on 2024 with one of the best sports stories all year.
Thursday night’s 3-0 win over Bosnian side Borac couldn’t have come at a better time – it means they’ve sealed qualification for the knockout stage ahead of next week’s glamour tie against Chelsea. Not a sentence that we get to write about League of Ireland clubs all too often.
At the end of one of the great years of Irish sport, Rovers’ jaunt through Europe has felt like a lock-in after the lights have been flashed. The kind of happy event that you hope for but regard with a kind of fatalistic doom until it’s actually happening. Johnny Kenny’s double in Tallaght means everyone can get the guitars out. This is going to go on for a while.
The expansion and restructuring of European football competitions over the past few seasons can be a bit disorientating and might be partly to blame for Stephen Bradley’s side being mostly ignored during their recent run.
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Following the in and outs can be a bit like divining what’s going to happen after the 14th count on election weekend. It doesn’t help that TV stations have to split the tables into three sections across the screens to fit everyone in. So maybe a bit of context is required here.
Think of it like this. Between the three leagues currently ongoing across Europe, there are 108 clubs competing. Only nine of those clubs are unbeaten after the first five games. Those are Liverpool in the Champions League, Lazio, Athletic Bilbao, Anderlecht, Manchester United and Galatasaray in the Europa League and Chelsea, Vitoria de Guimaraes and Shamrock Rovers in the Conference League.
Ignore all the sexy names on that list for a second and instead take a look at the club you haven’t really heard of. Vitoria de Guimaraes currently lie sixth in the Portuguese Primeira Liga, have never won the league and in their 102-year history, only have a single Portuguese Cup to their name in terms of trophies.
But they’ve regularly been able to pay over €1m for players and their record signing came to the club for €4.25m. For comparison’s sake, Shamrock Rovers’ record signing is the €35,000 they paid Bohemians for Andy Lyons a few years back. To even be competing on Vitoria’s level ought to be out of reach, given the resources an Irish club are able to call on.
This is no fluke, either. With 36 teams in the league, there’s bound to be a bit of ‘luck of the draw’ involved. But Rovers lie sixth despite having played two other teams in the top 10, Rapid Wien and Apoel FC.
They finish next week at Stamford Bridge, the one place every team in the competition didn’t want to have to see out the league phase. Even allowing for games against Larne and Welsh side the New Saints, nobody can say Rovers have had a handy run.
Bradley brings his side to Chelsea next Thursday with a relatively free hit – even if they managed to eke out a draw, there’s only an outside chance of them going straight to the last eight in March. They’re on 11 points and nine teams are bunched behind them on either nine or 10. The most likely scenario – and indeed the worst off they can be after the Chelsea game – is to be seeded in the round of 16 in February. Whatever happens, that’s an astonishing achievement.
This is especially true when you consider the low-level drumbeat of internal strife going on in the background. Tensions between the members group which owns 50 per cent of the club and investors Ray Wilson and Dermot Desmond, who both own 25 per cent each, have spilled out into the public domain over the past few weeks.
It has come to such a head that Bradley felt the need to talk about it in his programme notes on Thursday night, announcing that he had asked to speak with the members before the club AGM but his request had got knocked back.
When the man driving the dressing room and leading the club to unprecedented success is calling out the membership so publicly, it’s usually a worrying sign. Off-pitch tensions tend to pierce the first-team shield eventually.
But for now, Rovers are thriving. So much so that their big worry for this European campaign is how different they might look when the competition resumes in the New Year. Next week in Stamford Bridge is virtually certain to be the last time they’ll all share the same dressing room.
After the Borac game Bradley seemed resigned to the fact that Kenny in particular might well have played his way out of the club. He’s on loan from Celtic and probably can’t afford to wait two months for his next game. Plenty of teams might look at the top scorer in the Conference League and decide to go get him in January. Neil Farrugia seems primed for a move as well. Such is life.
All in all, it’s the most remarkable story to come out of Irish domestic football in a while – and that’s in a year when Damien Duff has Pied Pipered Shelbourne to an unlikely title. Rovers are playing out of season, they’ve been on the go since February without a break and they’re still, for all their success under Bradley, pretty small fry in a continental context.
But at a time when Irish football needs all the good news it can get, Rovers have kept on keeping on. In 11 European matches since July, they’ve banked upwards of €5.5m, with likely at least another million to come.
“We’ve put ourselves in a position where we can go and enjoy it as a club,” Bradley said of the Chelsea game.
An unheralded luxury, entirely deserved.
