Rovers first Home League game….. March 15, 2013
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So tonight Shamrock Rovers play their first home league game of the season as they take on St Pats at 7.35 in Tallaght.
Its been a strange start to the season with a poor soreless draw in Dundalk last Friday and the various Setanta cup games before and after that. We’ve looked good in the last three Setanta games but neither Linfield or Coleraine were any great shakes.
The fact that its four League of Ireland teams in the semi finals of the Setanta and the fact that they are withdrawing as sponsors means its likely to be the last of the trophy in its current guise. I suspect too that the behaviour of a number of “Rovers Fans” in Windsor Park last Monday did the competitions search for a new sponsor any favours.
There have over the years been incidents at various games from someone in Sligo shitting in the Glentoran bus to clashes between Bohs and Glentoran .
During the week, former manager, Michael O’Neill was interviewed and gave all sorts of quotes about Rovers and then we had the response of Rovers Chairman Jonathan Roche in the following days paper (he should have left well enough alone….).
I’m sure the truth is somewhere in the middle but it served as an unwelcome reminder of where we were this time last season…. ready to dominate the League for years… Progress in Europe and become Irelands Rosenberg… or at least that was what we were hoping for.
..and then along came Stephen Kenny……
It was an unbelievably bad season, you really couldn’t have made it up! No decent goalkeeper, a shambles of a defence, big losses to Bohs, Pats and Sligo …losing to Bohs in Tallaght. Being knocked out in Europe by the dreadful FC Ekranas from Lithuania … and the final icing on the cake of a disappointing season was Gary Twiggs departure to Portadown.
For new manager Trevor Croly , its early days yet but tonights game and Mondays game away in Dalymount are big tests that Rovers would want to get at least four points from. Of the new signings (of which 8 are former Hoops) all have looked good so far with Derek Foran, Sean O’Connor and Barry Murphy all showing well to date.
One of the big questions with Gary Twigg now departed is where the goals will come from. Mark Quigley has been brought in and Ciaran Kilduff is now a regular starter. Karl Sheppard is back on loan from Reading and Tommy Stewart scored a few goals in the Setanta. None though are goal poachers in the way Twigg was.
I hope to bring a Spaniard and a Portugese colleague along to the game tonight, so hopefully it wont be too cold and we’ll get a decent crowd, decent match and of course the right result!
The difference between the Sligo incident and your carry on in Windsor Park of course being that (A) The Sligo incident involved a couple of individuals while the Shams thing in Windsor Park involved a much larger number of supporters and (B) More importantly, Sligo Rovers apologised for the bus incident and paid money to a charity nominated by Glentoran, there hasn’t been a peep out of Shamrock Rovers about what happened at Linfield. The club haven’t apologised at all or mentioned the incident. I know that this involves a small minority of Shamrock Rovers supporters IEL but they behaved in exactly the same way on the last day of the season in The Showgrounds and the club said nothing then either. They never do which is why it may well be that the boneheads involved think their behaviour is being condoned.
When someone tried to stir it on this site re the Linfield thing I didn’t comment because I don’t like getting involved in some kind of tribal slanging match. But leave what happened in Sligo last year out of it in your attempts to make light of what happened in Windsor Park. We dealt with it, you haven’t and until you do it’s a blot on the name of the club and on the League of Ireland in general.
Agree with you. You may have read Jonathan Roches comments at the end of the Independent article.
Now I’ve heard it all before about various incidents over the years. I was wondering to myself too does it being a fans run club actually make dealing with this harder. By that some of the gurriers involved have been around a long time and some of those at the top at Rovers would probably know them well for years. So its very hard to kick out your mates.
Very, and from my point of view worryingly, impressive last night IEL. I think we can take it for granted you’ll score plenty of goals this season. We’ll have to wait to see what that back four is like under concerted pressure. I always worry when Finn is on the ball and also McCabe. Pats looked a bit diminished but it could just have been one of those nights for them.
Very early to judge yet but Dundalk are obviously going to be tricky for everyone. And fair play to Limerick for getting a point despite having three penalties awarded against them and having two players and their manager sent off. Could be that all these decisions were justified or could be that a foreign manager was once more getting the traditional League of Ireland welcome.
Before anything happens this season, and it looks like I’m reacting to a particular decision, I’d have to say that the standard of refereeing in the League is desperate. There’s a particular sound at a League of Ireland ground which I always think of as the ‘League of Ireland hush,’ which occurs when a player commits a foul which probably isn’t even worth a yellow but the crowd know the ref is perfectly capable of brandishing a red.
Still, lots of goals last night and a good start to the campaign.
Ditto. And not forgetting Finn Harp’s display either. Was it just one of those nights for St. Pat’s? Literally 10 seconds after kick off I was convinced that the Hoops had more players on the pitch than is allowable under AF rules. They were all over us. Ditto too with the standard of refereeing. When it was probably way too late, Pat’s should have had two penalties for very obvious handballs in the box (and I know I’m partisan). The Hoops’ back line got very physical in the last 20 minutes which, although rewarded with three frees more or less from the same spot, we weren’t able to get near the goal from. The first Hoops’ goal was the result of terrible defending which I hope I’ll never see again this season, but know I probably will. Inconsistency is surely becoming the hallmark of the Saints’ game, but I suppose it’s early days yet? Tuesday evening will sort out the early runnings and we can only hope Bohs put manners on the Hoops before things get out of hand.
Yeah it was great stuff from Rovers last night , goals and Murphys save below. Pats were poor though and you’d wonder who was really running the show last season at Pats. Some interesting results elswhere too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj3rhZutUlE
McCabe’s goal was great having seen it now on video. The other goals were just the result of bad, dithering defending that I wouldn’t expect to see in an U12 game. Pat’s can do better than that.
Clarke made a mess of that McCabe shot, from where I was standing, it was straight at him, didn’t particularly swerve and he somehow contrived to flap at it with the “wrong” hand. Last night’s result was actually Pats 3 v Pats 0.
I also wonder what is the point of Shamrock Rovers being portrayed as the official CLR team. I’ don’t think I actually want to be associated with a site which sees one of its functions as providing regular bulletins on the progress of ‘Ireland’s Rosenborg,’ and making veiled whataboutery apologies for its lunatic fringe.
Apologies. That’s well out of orde on my part I misread your motivations on bringing up the Sligo bus incident though I still can’t quite understand why you did it.
In any event I don’t think those fans, wretched and all as they were, can be blamed for the probable demise of the competition. The non competitive nature of the Irish League clubs which means it’s turned into a supernumary League of Ireland competition is what has sealed its fate.
I think I’d better refrain from comment on League of Ireland matters from now on.
Apologies, I was trying to show that there has been all sorts of negative publicity surrounding many of the Setanta games. Theres a Derry fan here in work who tells me that any time Linfield have played there its not the Derry fans but others from the city that get involved in trouble and see Linfield as an opportunity for violence.
Mondays scences were dreadful and I hate that about Rovers that there’s an thug element following them or that latch on to them.
Like all the other sports the future is attracting families to games, sponsors and so on. Crap like last Monday doesn’t exactly do us any favours.
Hopefully it will be dealt with but I have my doubts.
I shouldn’t have flared at you like that all the same. It was real oul keyboard warrior crap and I should know better.
Anyway, I hope it’s a great game tonight and a draw so you both take two points off each other.
The thing is for all the adverse publicity I brought my seven year old daughter to a load of games last year and never felt uneasy about it. She might have heard a bit of language but you’d get that at most sporting fixtures. She’s prepared for the new season by making plasticine models of all the L of I mascots, even Hooperman curse his name.
Say what you like about the Rovers “element”, I don’t think they’ve actually tried voodoo before.
As regards CLR becoming a Rovers soapbox (which, in fairness, I don’t think IEL is trying to do), I reckon there’s enough unbelievers here to stop that from happening. I quite like the idea of having a kind of This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Chanting Abuse At [Name of team].
Regarding the shit on the bus, did not an O’Connor do something similar to an O’Rourke in the fourteenth century? Not on a bus obviously.
This sort of stuff does however have a real effect on the teams and potential support. I’m bringing two ten year olds out to Tallaght tonight to support Pat’s and there would possibly have been five or six more if it wasn’t for the business last week. These kids play football twice a week for a local club and watch as much of it as they can on the box but they wouldn’t generally go to LoI games. Of course, when they do go, they generally want to come back again which means higher gate receipts, a better atmosphere in the stands and an increasing overall awareness that the league exists.
There was an interesting discussion on the Shels site last week about racist abuse that came from a section of the crowd, the general opinion being that the offenders should be shopped. Anyone know if anything’s happened on that front?
So anyway, games to keep an eye on tonight: most are saying the Hoops will draw with Pat’s, I’m saying an away win. Rovers are missing Twigg more than the Saints are missing Socky, though it’ll be strange, as always, to see how he plays against his old club. That’s on the box so there’s no excuse. The Bohiz have a few players in the sick bay but I still reckon they’ll come away with three points from Turner’s X. I’m also keeping an eye on the Finn Harps game, where Cobh Ramblers are making the long trip up through the Barnesmore Gap (having sold the executive jet). They’ll be knackered. I just hope nobody shits in their bus.
Clashes between Bohs and Glentoran? Wow. The lengths Rovers fans will go to to spread the blame is quite unique. These so called clashes you talk about where when the Gardai coked up riot squad milled into the shed end after the Glens unfurled a Union flag. There was no clashes between Bohs supporters and those of Glentoran.Keep your sectarian handbags to Tallaght and stop trying to smear the rest of us with it.
I’m sure Rovers will get a non-sectarian welcome on Monday.