Irish sides face some tricky away days

SOCCER:GIVEN THE spiralling number of new niche websites over the last few years it only seems a matter of time before someone gets around to setting up one that couples short notice air travel with scouting reports on the better teams from middle and lower ranking European leagues.

Eleven months of the year, there’d be virtual tumble weeds but come June and the draws for the early rounds of the Champions and Europa Leagues, they’d clean up.

Certainly such a site would have had the lads from Shamrock Rovers and St Patrick’s Athletic on yesterday. The Irish champions have been handed a tricky looking trip to Tallinn, at least insofar as the opposition goes, while their Inchicore rivals have what appears to be a more favourable draw on the football front, if only, that is, they can work out a vaguely affordable way of getting there.

“I think, to be honest, that it’s a very difficult tie for us,” said Rovers boss Michael O’Neill after a preliminary bout of research on Flora Tallinn, the Estonian champions who currently lead their league by seven points, unbeaten almost halfway through their campaign.

“For a start,” says O’Neill, “they’re in season like us, so that’s that advantage gone straight off and in the last Estonian squad that was named there was something like seven or eight of their players so they’re clearly a fairly decent team.”

Flora do look as though they might have the capacity to trouble over two legs. Despite winning the Estonian league eight times since their establishment in the early ’90s and finishing in the top four every year since ’92, the government backed outfit have made precious little impact on Europe, with their only success an away goals victory over Lyn Oslo in 2006.

Rovers do have the consolation that there are direct flights to Tallinn from Dublin.

The fact that the Champions League does not start until July 12th and 13th with the return legs a week later and that Rovers will be at home first will all help a little too when it comes to making the necessary arrangement although O’Neill readily admitted that the latter was something of a disappointment in terms of approaching the two-legged tie with a view to winning it.

St Patrick’s Athletic, meanwhile, were getting to grips yesterday with the fact that a scheduled flight to Iceland for their game against IBV on Thursday week is currently priced at well over €1,000 per person and the club have some frantic work to do over the next day or two in order to nail down how best to tackle the journey.

“I thought it was great logistically when I heard it first but then I realised there were no direct flights,” said Pete Mahon yesterday, “and suddenly it all looked like a bit of a nightmare.”

His side’s opponents only missed out on the league title on the last day of the season last year. They are going well again this time around but again their record in Europe is poor enough.

If St Patrick’s get through they will face FC Koper of Slovenia or Kazakhstan’s Shaktar Karagandy in the next round while Bohemians face either Siroki Brijeg of Bosnia Herzegovina or Olimpija Ljubljana from Slovenia.

Elsewhere, Crusaders look set to face Fulham in the second round of the Europa League and Sligo Rovers enter the fray when the third round is made in July.

SELECTED FIXTURES

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE

Second qualifying round: Shamrock Rovers v Flora Tallinn; HJK Helsinki v Bangor City; Linfield v BATE. Ties to be played July 12-13th and 19th-20th.

EUROPA LEAGUE

First qualifying round: The New Saints FC v Cliftonville; IBV Vestmannaeyjar v St Patrick’s Ath; Renova v Glentoran; Fulham v NSI Runavik. Second qualifying round: Renova/Glentoran v FC Vorskla Poltava; Crusaders v Fulham/NSÍ Runavík; Llanelli v Dinamo Tbilisi/FC Milsami; Široki Brijeg/NK Olimpija Ljubljana v Bohemians; New Saints/Cliftonville v FC Midtjylland; Slask Wroclaw v Dundee United; Koper/FC Shakhter Karagandy v ÍBV Vestmannaeyjar/St Patricks Ath.