SHAMROCK ROVERS’ two representatives at the Grimaldi Centre in Monaco yesterday had the look of men who had had an early start after a late night, but neither was complaining.
“It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind,” said general manager Noel Byrne as he emerged from the meetings that followed a Europa League draw which he and chairman Jonathan Roche had missed because they were still en route from Belgrade where their team had secured a dramatic extra-time success over Partizan.
There is plenty more of it to come. The club has begun what promises to be a hectic campaign to win approval from the FAI and Uefa for their plan to install extra seating and make the improvements necessary to bring Tallaght stadium up to the required standard for its three group matches.
However, Rovers’ ticket manager Peter Murphy told RTÉ news last night: “Realistically, I think the Aviva stadium is the most ideal location for a match against Spurs.”
Then there will be the task of negotiating deals with players, most of whom are only due to be paid until the end of the domestic season, which is some six weeks short of the Dublin club’s last of six scheduled European games . . . against Tottenham Hotspur at home.
Manager Michael O’Neill is, as luck would have it, under contract until the end of December, but the players appear not even to have clauses in the current deals in relation to bonuses for getting this far.
Given that the club must effectively field the same group of players all the way through, it could make for some interesting negotiations. But Byrne and Roche expressed confidence there will be nothing like the problems experienced a few weeks ago at St Patrick’s Athletic, whose game against Karpaty Lviv was under threat hours before kick-off because of a dispute over payments.
Rovers will, at the very least, seek to resolve the issue a little earlier than their rivals. “The manager, ourselves and the senior players will sit down early next week and try to work it out,” said Byrne, “but I don’t think that it’ll be a problem with our lads. I’d be confident that we won’t have anything like what happened at St Patrick’s. We’ll work it out.”
In financial terms, participation at this level of the competition brings guaranteed prize money of about €1 million, with bonuses for any games won or drawn. That is on top of the €550,000 or so reckoned to have been accumulated so far.
None of which is bad for a club with revenues of about €2.5 million last year. Monaco, however, might just have provided them with a fitting sense of the circles in which they are now moving: their group is completed by Russia’s Rubin Kazan and PAOK of Greece, and even the lesser of those two have a turnover almost 10 times as large as the Dubliners.