Expectations start to grow

InterToto Cup preview: It is, perhaps, a measure of how low expectations for Eircom League clubs have sunk when it comes to European football that Shamrock Rovers central defender Stephen McGuinness will be getting married this afternoon while the rest of the club's players are in the Czech Republic for tomorrow's InterToto Cup second-round, first-leg game against Slovan Liberec.

Rovers, of course, had no right to expect to beat last week's opponents, Odra Wodzislaw, a decent side from a league generally accepted to be stronger than ours but they pulled it off thanks to professional preparation and the superior fitness gifted to them by the new timing of the season here.

Against Liberec the Dubliners have even less cause for confidence but it remains just possible that the same combination may again provide the recipe for success.

All through the past week Rovers manager Liam Buckley has been referring to Liberec as a "crack outfit" and the facts suggest that he is not going too far overboard.

Liberec's coach Ladislav Skorpil has plenty of talent to choose from ahead of tomorrow's game with the FAI Cup finalists with his squad including a couple of senior internationals as well as a healthy representation of the strong underage Czech sides of recent seasons.

Buckley makes no bones about how highly he rates a team that only lost in last year's Champions League qualifying round to Milan on away goals and who subsequently put both Dinamo Tbilisi and Ipswich out of the UEFA Cup.

But, as he did before the Odra games, he is hoping that their lack of pace at the back and the frailty under a floating ball of the team's goalkeeper, Antonin Kinsky, as well as a little close-season rustiness will give his players a reasonable shot at staging an upset.

Liberec have also struggled to score goals over the past season but signed under-21 international Michal Pospisil from Sparta a few weeks back in an effort to remedy the weakness. The 24-year-old scored seven in 23 league appearances for Sparta last season as well as two in six European outings

The Rovers boss is aiming, needless to say, to keep the tie alive for the return leg in Dublin next week. "Even a close defeat would leave us with everything to play for," he says but with the Czechs only having been back training for two weeks it seems more like that, if they are to be beaten over two legs, they will have to suffer some measure of disappointment in the first.

The Dubliners head for the game with a full squad, McGuinness excepted, and Buckley is likely to stand by the same 11 players that started each of the Odra games with Terry Palmer marshalling the defence and eircom/SWAI player of the month for June Tony Grant leading the attack.

If the team can again utilise the pace it possesses out on the wings it could be capable of causing the Czechs problems and an away goal would make next Sunday's return game very interesting, not least because Racing Santander of Spain await the winners in the next round.