Irish sides facing unknown quantities

Stephen Kenny and Paul Doolin will embark on much-needed reconnaissance missions to Scotland and Norway respectively over the next 10 days after discovering yesterday their sides are each to face somewhat more obscure opponents in the second qualifying round of the Uefa Cup than they beat in the first.

Derry City's opponents may only be from Scotland but the club's manager admits to not having devoted too much time to following their highly successful campaign in Scotland's third tier.

The club did catch the eye with their remarkable cup run which only ended when Hearts beat them on penalties in the final.

The club have, in fact, been causing quite a few upsets during the couple of seasons since charismatic local insurance millionaire Brooks Mileson began providing substantial financial support.

Just over 12 months ago they won the Third Division title after scoring a record 130 goals in 36 games and last season they followed the feat up by winning the Second Division by 18 points.

Mileson, oddly enough, had been heavily linked with clubs here and held talks with both Shamrock Rovers and St Patrick's Athletic about making an investment, but to date he has preferred to concentrate on the Scottish outfit, who just five years ago were playing their football in the Unibond League.

He is currently in the process of building the club a 6,000-seat stadium but it comes too late for their European debut, which will be made on August 10th just outside Glasgow at Fir Park, the home of Motherwell.

Asked what he knew about his side's next European opponents, Kenny laughed and conceded: "Not enough, although hopefully I'll manage to address that between now and the game."

On the face of it the Scots will be disadvantaged by having to move their home game 75 miles and Derry are hopeful the relative ease of access means they will be able to bring a substantial travelling support.

"It's certainly not a bad thing from our point of view," says Kenny, "although they seem to have done okay when they played at Hampden last season."

Gretna have one league game prior to the first European game - against Hamilton on Saturday week - and Kenny is likely to be there.

Doolin, meanwhile, will do his best to get to Oslo on Monday in order to see IK Start take on Viking because, if he misses that, getting to the club's hometown of Kristiansand on Norway's south coast will present a somewhat bigger challenge.

Start were twice Norwegian champions, back in 1978 and 1980, but they rather drifted out of things after that until last season, when they finished second.

Two weeks ago they sacked their coach, and on Monday Stig Inge Bjornebye, the former Liverpool and Blackburn Rovers left back, is due to take charge. He arrives as they lie 12th of 14 clubs in the league with just three wins from 14 games, though they did beat Rosenberg last weekend before easing past Skala of the Faroe Islands 3-0 in midweek.

"I've heard that they haven't made the best of starts to the current season," said Doolin. "But it's probably fair to say that the Norwegian league would be slightly better than the Finnish one and, after the way they did last year, it's hard to imagine that they won't be very tough opponents. All I can say is that we'll find out as much as we can about them and prepare well."

Cork City, meanwhile, have been handed a huge financial incentive to beat Red Star Belgrade with the news the Italian giants AC Milan are likely to be waiting for the winners in the third qualifying round of the Champions League.

Milan's inclusion in the draw was only on a provisional basis, for Uefa's Emergency Committee will rule only next week on whether the club be allowed to compete in the wake of events in Italy. But City will now travel to the Serbian capital knowing that while the group stages may be pretty much off the agenda, an unlikely victory on Wednesday would earn them a considerable amount of money.