Sporting Fingal -v- Shamrock Rovers

• Colman Hanley
• Thu, Sep 10 2009


The Morton stadium hosts the all Dublin FAI Cup quarter-final between Sporting Fingal and Shamrock Rovers (kick-off 7:30pm). Both sides, second in the Premier and First Division, are in good form off the back of 1-0 victories in Dublin derbies last week. Therefore, the game promises to be an entertaining affair.

For Sporting Fingal manager Liam Buckley, the game sees him face a club he previously managed and won a league title with. However despite his success with the Hoops, ‘Bucko’ never won an FAI Cup.

Finals with Rovers in 1984 as a player and in 2002 as a manager ended in tears, while he also lost a final with Saint Patrick’s Athletic in 1996 under former Ireland manager Brian Kerr.

Buckley accepts his Fingal side face a difficult task. “At the moment Rovers are the best project in the country. With their new ground, the work the fans have done since they went into examinership, the signings they have made this season like Pat Sullivan, Pat Kavanagh and Alan Mannus, Rovers are looking to win the league championship and possibly do the double. So from this perspective, it’s a very big game on Saturday.”

But while he acknowledged the difficulty of the task facing his players, he stressed that his side would not be daunted of the task. “From our point of view, we haven’t been doing too bad lately. We’ve got a lot of good players also, so I think everyone’s excited and looking forward to the game. We’re three games away from a final. We’re not seen as the favourites so we’re going to be underdogs obviously.”

“The one thing that we will have in our favour is that we are at home, so that will help us to some degree. I’ve no doubt that Rovers will bring out a fantastic crowd. They’re second in their league, we’re second in ours. We’re excited about the game and we’ll see how things go on the night.”

However the tag of being favourites means nothing for Shamrock Rovers striker Dessie Baker, who instead expressed his sides focus to progress to the semi-final of the FAI Cup. “It’s a cup quarter-final so there’s a lot at stake for both clubs. Fingal would love to get our scalp, they’ve got some really good players, and are managed by Liam Buckley, who has huge connections with Shamrock Rovers."

“For us, getting to the final this year would be brilliant as the game’s being played at Tallaght Stadium. Everyone wants to play in a cup final, but there’s an added attraction for us. “This is a huge game, and even though Fingal are in the First Division, we won’t be underestimating them. Fingers crossed there’s a big and noisy away support and we do enough to book a place in the semi-finals.”

Team News
Last week’s 1-0 victory over UCD saw Fingal jump ahead of the Students into second place in the First Division, while it also proved to be the first occasion that Buckley had a fully fit squad to choose from. Buckley hopes this will be the case for the rest of the season, “We struggled early on in the season to get the full squad together, Stephen Paisley was out for quite a while, Shaun Maher and Gary O’Neill too. But we’ve been able to get key players back slowly but surely. We’ve also seen our results settle down now over the last few weeks.”

For Michael O’Neill’s Shamrock Rovers side, he welcomes back Pat Sullivan who missing through suspension and Alan Mannus who was on International duty last weekend. Barry Murphy could drop to the bench despite his clean sheet versus Saint Patrick’s Athletic. Darragh Maguire (calf) missed last weekend’s victory, but could return. Paddy Kavanagh and Stephen Bradley miss out through suspension.

Extratime.ie Prediction: A big crowd in Morton Stadium should see an entertaining affair, but the home side could be just edged out by Rovers superior quality. 1-2.