Shelbourne ready to break a long-standing Irish tradition

When Shelbourne's skipper Pat Scully describes their position ahead of this evening's Champions League first qualifying round tie against Sloga Jugomagnat of Macedonia in Tolka Park (7.45) as "unusual" his assessment is probably a strong early contender for understatement of the season.

It's nearly two decades since any club from the Republic has won away from home in European football and so defending a lead won't exactly come naturally to anybody in the Shelbourne camp.

On the face of it, the tough part was done in Skopje a week ago but, as Scully, manager Dermot Keely and everyone else at Tolka are only too well aware, Irish clubs have had more hard-luck stories than victories to reflect upon down the years, so the chicken counting is being kept to a minimum.

"We don't think we're through yet by any means," says Scully. "We know that we're going to have to play very well again and that to sit back and defend now would be very dangerous.

"It's an unusual position to be at home in a Champions League match defending a lead but, considering the heat and technical ability of the Sloga players, we've done well to get ourselves into this position. Now that we're at home we have the opportunity to show them that we can play a bit, which they showed us they could do over there last week."

Like his big central defender, Keely is cautiously optimistic about his side's chances of going through to face Norwegian side Rosenborg next week in the second round of the competition, but having seen them outplayed for most of the away leg he reckons that Shelbourne will have to be far more commanding this evening if their slender lead isn't to disappear.

"In the second half we limited them to a couple of shots on goal, but if we let them they'll put us under a lot of pressure again which I don't intend allowing to happen.

"We'll have to be flexible, it'll be a bit of an all hands to the pump job, but the idea will be to take the game to them from the kick-off and hopefully to win it on the night as well as over the two legs."

Keely's hand is strengthened somewhat by the return to full fitness of Scully who came on for Robert Raeside at half-time last Wednesday, but otherwise the Dubliner goes into the game with the same panel as he had in Skopje.

Though Keely says he will only announce his starting line-up an hour or so before the kick-off it's hard, in the circumstances, to see him making any other changes, with Mark Hutchison set to retain the left-full position in the continuing absence of the injured Declan Geoghegan and Paul Doolin, who struggled in the Macedonian heat, starting again in central midfield.

The visitors are expected to field much the same team too with their three senior internationals - Saso Zdravevski, Zoran Jovanski and Argend Beciri - again expected to play key roles.

If Shelbourne fail to impose themselves early on in the game then it promises to be a long and difficult evening for them but, crucially, their fate will be in their own hands and that should make an interesting spectacle of it.