Pat Fenlon: Damien Duff to contribute on and off the pitch

Shamrock Rovers boss Pat Fenlon believes Damien Duff can bring much more than his obvious talent to the club over the next 18 months with the 46 year-old insisting that the former international can help to instil a new culture of professionalism to the club's younger players.

“The fact that we don’t have a fully professional means that the younger lads miss out on a few things,” says Fenlon, “and a big part of that is actually learning at an early stage what it is to be a professional, to look after your diet, preparing for games, the importance of recovery.

“We have quite a few young lads here - we’ve recently given a couple of the younger ones contracts but even in terms of the first team there is the likes of Dave Webster, Mikey Drennan and Craig Hyland - and being around somebody with Damien’s experience can play a massive part in making them into better players. He will give them a better idea of what it is to be a professional footballer which is something they can only benefit from.”

Beyond that, Duff will work on the coaching side of things with one of the club’s younger sides. “He’s trying to get his badges and we’ll certainly be looking to accommodate him with that. The quicker he goes from the courses to working with players the better i think and there will be opportunities for him to do that here.”

In terms of how he will fit into the team, Fenlon says Duff can play anywhere across the attacking line. There must be a temptation for the manager to locate him more centrally, just off the striker, so that he can influence things to a greater extent but the manager suggests that his traditional position, out on the wing is somewhere where the club might have an opening just now.

“He can play anywhere there, including just off the striker, but we’ve lost Sean O’Connor, probably for the season now, and he could certainly fill that role. Look, everybody knows the quality he has so he’s certainly going to bring something to the group although I’ve been impressed by the fact that he has to get into the team first.

“He’s a few weeks off being fit but when he is he has to get into the side and the way things have been here, if you’ve done well in the side then there’s tended to be a good chance that you would keep your place.”

That said, with two of Rovers' sponsors, Hyundai and Pepper, contributing to Duff's salary it would be quite something if the former Blackburn, Chelsea and Fulham star was to have to hang about much on the sidelines.

Beyond that, Fenlon says there is very little money to bring in the actual striker he has been saying he wants although that is not the only problem.

“Well, one thing is that earlier in the season we probably weren’t scoring as many goals as we would have expected to but that’s maybe not such as issue more recently. And anyway, what we wanted to do was bring in someone who was different to what we had and there’s not too many like that out there. I think we’re now actively looking more to bring someone in at the end of the season.”

Rovers play Odds BK of Norway in the Europa League on Thursday evening.