SHELBOURNE MUST BEAT Waterford at the RSC tonight to guarantee they retain their place at the top of the Premier Division heading into the mid-season break.

But Reds boss Damien Duff says his players won’t be on the first flight out of Dublin tomorrow morning to celebrate a milestone that means nothing until the end of the season.

If they drop points against Waterford and Derry City beat Bohemians at Dalymount Park, it will be the Candystripes who will be looking down on the rest as the league hits pause for the next two weeks.

That in itself is enough to sharpen the focus although Duff insists his squad won’t be over indulging afterwards.

“What’s happened before in this league is irrelevant. The culture we’ve created now is different, and we are different. It’s nice to get a few days off, but the summer break is about recharging, taking it handy and maintaining fitness. In the past, players might have been on the drink for the week, but not with us,” he said.

“That won’t happen. If anyone goes away for a week of drinking, we’ll know immediately, first day back in training, it’ll be obvious. The lads know they can’t afford to do that. They’ve been given individual plans, and we trust them.

“We’re not sending them away with the GPS vests. In the environment we’ve created, we have our standards, players are all in on that, we know the players will follow through.”

Shels have a pretty tricky assignment to come through before they can enjoy some well-earned rest.

Waterford have won their last four home games in a row – scoring 14 goals in the process – although a 1-0 defeat away at Tolka Park also came during that

““I told the guys today that it’s such a dangerous game for us, just look at their squad, their results, their performances. They have a lot of dangerous players, would get into many teams around the league,” Duff said.

“Padraig Amond is one of the best in the league—what a signing he’s been for them. Full of confidence, scoring for fun. We know what’s at stake and understand the dangers, it’s about matching that now.”

Shels have traditionally gotten stronger and found consistency in the second half of the campaign under Duff and the former Ireland international expects that to continue even after being the pace setters.

“Over recent weeks, we laid a challenge down to the guys on lifting levels for non derby games, we saw that with wins over Waterford and Dundalk, a lot of the display against Sligo, it wasn’t the result we wanted, we gave away poor goals but the performance was dominant.

“We can’t always rely on the crowd to get us up for games outside of the derbies. We need to find that in us. It’s a squad game too. The subs need to be ready. Last week, we were ultra-dominant, and it was very similar against Waterford in Tolka.

“We’re just growing in quality and that has been the case from year one, to today. There’s a lot more in this team now and they’ll continue to grow. The game has evolved and changed. It’s a 100-minute game, if it’s 0-0 at 70 minutes, we still believe we can win, we need the fans to believe too and stay with us for the 100 minutes.”