League of Ireland 2025
- Thread starter Bluerover
- Start date
Bluerover
Player Valuation: £60m
2-2 FT.
I'll certainly take that after being two down.
No more League football for the Hoops until home to Derry on the 1st August. That will be some night in Tallaght.
European and FAI Cup for us in remainder of July with a friendly v Glenavon next week. Need to avoid injuries against Glenavon - give some fringe squad players a run out, and let the first team squad take it reasonably easy.
We play winners of Cliftonville and St Joseph's Gibraltar in Europe; Wexford in the Cup.
Derry away to Sligo then home to Bohs before coming to Tallaght on the 1st.
Bohs' other League match is home to Galway next week.
Standings:
P. PTS. Gd
Shamrock Rovers 25. 49. + 44
Derry. 23. 40. + 35
Bohemians. 23. 38. + 5
Drogheda. 25. 38. + 4
I'll certainly take that after being two down.
No more League football for the Hoops until home to Derry on the 1st August. That will be some night in Tallaght.
European and FAI Cup for us in remainder of July with a friendly v Glenavon next week. Need to avoid injuries against Glenavon - give some fringe squad players a run out, and let the first team squad take it reasonably easy.
We play winners of Cliftonville and St Joseph's Gibraltar in Europe; Wexford in the Cup.
Derry away to Sligo then home to Bohs before coming to Tallaght on the 1st.
Bohs' other League match is home to Galway next week.
Standings:
P. PTS. Gd
Shamrock Rovers 25. 49. + 44
Derry. 23. 40. + 35
Bohemians. 23. 38. + 5
Drogheda. 25. 38. + 4
Cliftonville likely to be spicy if they make it?
Bluerover
Player Valuation: £60m
Cliftonville are supported mostly by Nationalists unlike most of the other Irish League clubs such as Linfield, Glentoran, Crusaders, Ballymena etc
Derry City has a mixed following yet were forced to leave the Irish League and spent decades in limbo before applying to join the League of Ireland.
I have never seen any problems with Derry fans.
However my only experience of Cliftonville fans was being held at knifepoint by one of their supporters during a Mickey Mouse 'Tyler All Ireland Cup' match in Milltown around 1979.
Rover fans didn't bother turning up for what was seen as a glorified friendly but Cliftonville brought thousands of fans who proceeded to act in a most obnoxious way, including robbing young Rovers fans like me.
Very few Gardaī present as they probably thought it was low risk.
I expect things to be very different if Cliftonville are our opponents in Europe. It will be heavily policed north and south, and there will be a very large attendance from Rovers fans this time.
On the pitch, one Johnny Giles scored the winner but I was afraid to cheer as I was surrounded by Cliftonville hooligans, having had my scarf and badges forcibly taken off me.
On the pitch this time, I think Rovers are much stronger.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Wouldn't Cliftonville have still been a mixed support club at that point? From what I understand the demographics around that part of north Belfast would still have been in flux and Cliftonville retained pockets of loyalist (or at least Unionist) support. You'd possibly have been attacked by them?
Bluerover
Player Valuation: £60m
No Dave.
Although Cliftonville play in north Belfast they were adopted by Nationalists in the absence of Belfast Celtic particularly after Jackie Hutton took over in 1976 and managed them to a Cup win in 1979.
The club was originally founded by Prtestants but I don't think they ever had a bar on RCs playing à la Linfield.
With population shifts bringing greater numbers of RCs to North Belfast, and in the absence of Belfast Celtic from the League after 1949 (the club dissolved in 1960), Catholics in north Belfast adopted Cliftonville.
The "fans" that terrorised this 14 year old and many others at Milltown were bedecked in tricolours and singing pro- IRA songs. Mind you, Rovers fans were also very Republican back then, and also sang and changed pro-IRA songs.
Perhaps they were gung-ho after their historic IFA Cup triumph earlier and were trying to show off to Dublin LOI fans that they were the next big thing.
I am glad that Rovers Ultras don't seem to bother with this stuff much except perhaps when playing the likes of Linfield! A couple of idiots acted badly at time of QE2's death, but vast majority were respectful.
The 'Ultras' in the South Stand at Tallaght have loads of chants that I never heard in the 70s, 80s or before Tallaght, and I have never heard the old Provo chants since we moved to Tallaght.
I couldn't find details of the match on the net but my dusty old ' A Record of League of Ireland Football 1921/2 to 1984/5' came to the rescue.
Played on Wednesday 8 August 1979. Rovers lost 1-2 to Athlone in the SF who then beat Drogheda 3-2 over 2 legs to win it.
Linfield beat Athlone 2-1 in the 80/81 version -It wasn't played after that.
In 77/8 Rovers beat Finn Harps in a one off final, played at Milltown.
No record of any Tyler Cup in 78/9 in the book and wiki says it wasn't played that season.
It would have been interesting if the hard core Roversion fans had attended the match in greater numbers that time, but it was really sickening to see so- called fellow Nationalists behave like that to kids.
It was also before Milltown got floodlighting so any adult working Rovers supporters unlikely to give up a day's leave for such a fixture.
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Leylo
Player Valuation: £35m
Did seb quirk play? just signed for sligo my mates lad he was at Everton since he was about 12 until he was 21 went to accrington problems with injuries but hopefully of the right track...
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Beggars belief that they could do that to another fan from your neck of the woods. I don't really associate ordinary football hooliganism with the period of conflict in the north at that time - just sectarianism. Just looking at a book called No Foreign Game and it does say they had a mob following them at that time called the Red Army who - as well as standing up to loyalist club supporters - were also into petty acts of thuggery.
Also, could it have been partly a cross border thing or a belief among nationalists at the time in the north that football authorities in the south had left them to their own fate at the hands of the IFA and sectarianism in the north and there was resentment built up with all things football from the south...fans of clubs from the south included?
Bluerover
Player Valuation: £60m
Who knows?
Certainly soured me against them I don't have affinity for any team in the NI League.
As regards speculation of a grudge against the south for abandoning them, well Derry stuck it out, took their time, got sanction from UEFA and eventually joined the LOI.
Their mixed fan base don't engage in political or religious chanting. The odd tricolour but then that is the official national flag of the country in whose League they play.
Interesting about the Red Army - sounds like the thugs we met in Milltown in 79 alright.
Gallaeo
Player Valuation: £2.5m
Think I’ll be wanting a Bohs result v Derry or at least a draw.
Sligo away is difficult and they’ve signed well in window but two wins for Derry and they’re only 3 back before our game
Bluerover
Player Valuation: £60m
No. I agree.
I think they were trying to make a name for themselves after winning the NI Cup in 79.
Still, I would be horrified if any Rovers or Everton fan pulled a knife on a teenager and robbed colours off h
No surprise they supported Rovers against the filth.
Glentoran hate Linfield even more than Cliftonville - complex Loyalist politics thing...I know and East Belfast Glensman who absolutely hates Linfield. Never as exercised against Cliftonville for some reason.
Of course Dermot Keely is a hero with Glens fans.
Bluerover
Player Valuation: £60m
Came on at 60'.
Sligo Rovers: Sam Sargeant; Conor Reynolds, Paddy McClean, Ollie Denham, Will Fitzgerald; James McManus (Seb Quirk 60), Jake Doyle-Hayes; Jad Hakiki; Owen Elding (Cian Kavanagh 85), Ryan O'Kane (Kyle McDonagh 91); Wilson Waweru (Francely Lomboto 60).
Shamrock Rovers: Ed McGinty; Lee Grace, Roberto Lopes, Dan Cleary; Danny Grant, Josh Honohan (Maxim Kovalevskis 76); Matt Healy, Dylan Watts (Jack Byrne 63), Danny Mandroiu (Aaron McEneff 87); Rory Gaffney (John McGovern 76), Graham Burke (Michael Noonan 64).
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