Rovers can still get drive for five going SQUAD DEPTH KEY FOR CHAMPIONS
FIVE in a row. Until Jim Gavin came along, no one in Irish sport had managed it.
Mick O’Dwyer came close with the Kerry footballers, Brian Cody nearly did it with the Kilkenny hurlers.
And in football there was Jim McLaughlin and Shamrock Rovers.
Except by the time Rovers were on their drive for five, McLaughlin was gone and so was Milltown.
My point is that it is exceptionally hard for any team, in any sport, to win five successive championships.
Look at the history of our League.
In the last decade, Dundalk were by far the most successful side, winning five titles. Yet Cork, under John Caulfield, were also strong and determined, managing to interrupt their sequence.
The decade before saw Shelbourne dominate, winning four titles out of seven.
I remember that era well because, proudly, I was the manager of Bohs when we pipped them to the 2001 title on the final day of the season.
Bohs would win another title two years later before Cork City came along to win the 2005 League.
That’s League of Ireland football summed up in a nutshell.
Nothing lasts forever. No era is without its challenges.
In between Rovers’ era in the 1980s and Shelbourne’s period of dominance in the Noughties, St Pat’s won four League titles in the ‘90s. They have won just one since.
Old timers remember Waterford’s glorious era — six titles in eight years. They are still waiting on title No7.
Surprised
That’s the League. You may think it is predictable but it is anything but.
So, am I surprised Shamrock Rovers are nine points off the top, positioned in fifth, winners of just three games so far this season? In one sense, I am. And then when I flick through history’s scrapbook, I’m not.
This is a hard League to win, even if you have the biggest budget, the best players, the best stadium, the best structure.
Week after week, teams are raising their game when they face Rovers, St Pat’s the latest to do so on Friday night.
Now, bear in mind what is required to win five straight titles. Their first came in the Covid-shortened 2020 season, when they raced away with the League to win it after just 18 games.
Since then they have played 116 League games. It takes a lot of mental energy to be fully tuned in for every second of those 116 matches.
What makes it even trickier is the fact that for opposition teams, their four games each season against Rovers are their biggest matches in the calendar. They raise their game for those ties.
And yet I don’t see motivation as an issue for Rovers.
Their fans won’t allow complacency. If standards slip, they don’t hesitate to let players or managers know.
They are the most demanding fans in the country, which is a good thing. It drives standards. It makes players go the extra yard.
But the central point remains, that just because these Rovers players are driven, just because they are a really good team, that doesn’t guarantee anything — because everyone else wants the same prize.
Rivals
And three of their rivals are good enough to claim it: Shelbourne, St Pat’s and Derry.
Dundalk won’t win this year’s League but they were good enough to take a point off Rovers on the opening night.
Drogheda won’t end up as champions, either, and yet they were a minute away from beating the unbeaten leaders, Shelbourne, on Friday. Plus they have a good record against Rovers under Kevin Doherty.
Then you have Sligo. Will they remain a top-half team as the season progresses? Probably not. But they are good enough to take any team out on their day. They held Stephen Bradley’s side scoreless.
Galway lost to Shamrock Rovers but went up to Derry and won; Bohs have been poor so far this year but those feisty
Dublin derbies in Dalymount can easily go their way as the year progresses.
Waterford are the one of the best teams to emerge from the promotion play-offs in years possibly ever. No one will get it easy in the RSC. Ask Shelbourne, who could only draw there.
So, you get the message.
This year’s League — as Kevin Doherty said on Friday — is the strongest ever.
We have never had as much depth.
Every game will be a battle, every point will be hard earned, and while it is easy to dismiss Shelbourne’s nine-point lead over Rovers on the basis that there is so much of the season still to play, it is still a serious advantage.
Ultimately, though, Europe will impact them. They will find it difficult to try and balance European and domestic duties.
Crunch
That’s when the teams with the bigger squads tend to come good. They find a way to get results, even when players are tired.
And it is why my tip for this year’s title remains Shamrock Rovers.
When it comes to the crunch games, like last year’s trips to Derry and Richmond Park in the title run-in, they held their nerve. That’s when Leagues are won, not in the first series of games.
And that’s why their drive for five hasn’t crashed. It has merely struck a pothole.
SHAMROCK ROVERS boss Stephen Bradley has highlighted the cost of complacency to his champions after they blew a derby lead at St Pat’s.
And he has hammered home the message that bloodthirsty rivals are queuing up to pounce if his players ‘don’t engage their brains for 90 minutes’.
Rovers were good value for their 1-0 halftime lead at Richmond Park on Friday, with Darragh Nugent heading home a fourth-minute opener.
Dylan Watts also hit the crossbar and Graham Burke curled narrowly wide, while Rovers wanted a second-half penalty.
But the Saints came roaring back into the contest and scored two goals in two minutes from skipper Joe Redmond and Alex Nolan to win the game.
And Bradley was livid at what he feels were a catalogue of errors from his players in the build up to both goals.
Period
“If you don’t deploy your brain for 90 minutes in any league, but especially this league, you don’t win games,” he said.
“For 45 minutes we were as good as anything you will see. And the last 25 minutes were really good.
“But for that little period in between, we came away from it and if you do that in any game of football you’re going to get punished and you don’t deserve to win games.”
Bradley continued: “Maybe we got too complacent and felt everything we were working on was working, and maybe we thought the secondhalf it would just happen.
“But in any game of football, it never just happens, you have to make it happen and for those first 15 minutes of the second-half, we were miles away from making it happen.”