AFTER A short break to coincide with the international window, Shamrock Rovers and Rory Gaffney won’t exactly have the luxury of easing themselves back into the swing of things.
Following a slow start, the Hoops have gradually improved as the season has developed, and find themselves six points clear at the top of the table.
And the next few days could prove crucial as they bid to win a fourth title on the bounce and 21st in total.
On Friday, they travel to Dalymount Park to face arch-rivals Bohemians before on Monday hosting Derry, the team widely tipped as their main title challengers this season and who are currently in second place.
Yet perhaps the biggest threat to Rovers’ domestic dominance is the potential distraction of European football.
Stephen Bradley’s side struggled at times last season to compete on two fronts and were sometimes forced to play weakened teams, particularly as the Premier Division season approached its climax while they were participating in the Europa Conference League Group stages.
Yesterday, it was confirmed that the Hoops will play the winners of the preliminary round — one of Atlètic Club d’Escaldes (Andorra), Budućnost Podgorica (Montenegro), Tre Penne (San Marino) or Breidablik (Iceland) — as their Champions League qualification campaign gets underway at Tallaght Stadium on 11/12 July.
“It’s a nice bonus, a nice distraction,” says Gaffney, who was speaking after accepting the SSE Airtricity League Player of the Year award on Tuesday evening. “They are always special nights, they are normally sell-outs, you obviously get to go away and you don’t know where you are heading off to. It’s a new experience and it’s a lovely bonus.”
“And it’s why you want to be playing for the best team in Ireland.”
Gaffney insists his side will not turn the focus away from their upcoming domestic commitments but was upbeat about his team’s European prospects after Tuesday’s draw.
“The draw that we got today, it’s quite favourable on paper, it’s who you would have wanted,” the striker said, speaking before news of their potential second-round opponents, FC Copenhagen, was confirmed. “Now, they could be very good, but if you had to pick the team that you had to play, it would have been those lads.”
Gaffney, meanwhile, did acknowledge that European football can be somewhat of a mixed blessing, though they are ostensibly in better stead this time around, after the learning curve of last year’s exhausting campaign.
“It just shows you while we were struggling with lads who were injured, we probably had to not focus on the group games in Europe. We had bigger games on Sundays in the league to hopefully have another run at it again in the summer.
“Obviously the rewards for the club, with the prize money at stake, I don’t know how much it was but it probably cost them a few pounds to do all the hotels and flights that we had to get on, and we were well looked after when we were away; I’m sure that ate into it.
“In a dream world, you want to make the group stages and have a 10-point lead going into them, but it’s probably unlikely to be that way.”
And turning to more immediate matters, Gaffney believes the reigning champions’ inconsistent start in the league is a sign of the Premier Division getting stronger.
“I suppose our slip-ups have come off the back of other teams being more competitive. We’ve dropped points against Cork twice, Drogheda twice and away to Sligo.
“We would have come home on the bus saying: ‘They’ll take points off other teams.’ It’s not like this is a team that we should easily beat and no one else will drop points against them. We only play one league game in July and it’s against Drogheda. And we already talk about it being such a hard game. It’s not an easy game, you are not guaranteed three points at all.”
