Five-star show from Rovers in Europe

SHAMRCOK Rovers have made it into the second round of UEFA Champions League qualification thanks to a 5-1 win against Maltese side Floriana last night in Tallaght Stadium.

Rovers had been beaten 2-0 in the reverse fixture in Malta a week prior and a loss on aggregate Tuesday night would have seen them drop out of the running for Champions League and Europa League Qualification and back into the Conference League qualifiers.

As it stands, Rovers have so far banked €175,000 from their European campaign.

They now play Ararat Armenia in the next round of qualification though they have to play Cork City in the domestic Cup in a repeat of last year’s final.

Lee Grace, John McGovern, Dylan Watts, Graham Burke and Jack Byrne all got themselves on the scoresheet against Floriana on Tuesday as the team was captained by a returning Pico Lopes, his first game at club level after a hugely memorable World Cup with Cape Verde.

The night was particularly memorable for Graham Burke who overtook David McMillian to become Rovers all time leading goalscorer in European competitions. The goal on the night was his 15th goal for the club in Europe.

Stephen Bradley spoke extremely positively of his side’s performance.

“These players have done it, like last year, not going through the Champions route to get to group stage football. For me, they’ve set the standards for what we should accept and what we should look to reach in Irish football, domestically and in Europe, they continue to do that. I’m delighted for them that they’ve hit all them records,”

“Our aim is to keep improving. I said the players have set the standards for years and they continue to do so.

‘Last year, how we did the group stage, the path, let’s see where this path takes us. We’ll definitely obviously be going to try and win the tie next week and the week after for sure.

“I genuinely don’t know obviously where we’ll end up, time will tell but our aim is to keep improving.

‘What that looks like is a group stage football and it’s more points on the board than what we got last year. I think that shows improvement.

‘Domestically we know what we have to do but we need to keep pushing the bar and the standards.”