David Sneyd

LUCAN VILLAGE IS an apt place to meet Rory Gaffney, the best player in the country as voted for by his peers last season.

When he signed for Shamrock Rovers from Salford City in the final few hours of the 2020 transfer window, following what he describes as “a shit end to my time in England”, the Galwegian visited the west Dublin suburb looking for a new place to live with his partner Sinead.

After Cambridge, Bristol and Manchester in the United Kingdom, this was the couple’s latest stop on a football journey which spanned the highs of promotion to League One to the lows of a disastrous loan spell with Walsall, when his own fans would issue a regular cry of “fuck off, Gaffney”.

A change was needed.

Rovers called, and Lucan seemed ideal. Close to the club’s Roadstone training base, as well as Tallaght Stadium, it would also be handy to get on the M4 for trips back to family and friends in Tuam.

“But I didn’t really check the price of rent before deciding. Jesus,” Gaffney sighs. “We quickly realised we couldn’t afford to live in Dublin. There were some places around here, small one-bedroom apartments, and they were looking for €2,000 a month.”

That is when they made the decision to try find somewhere more affordable closer to where the pair both grew up, and when Sinead was able to get a job in social care with Tulsa, it just made sense.

“She has always left jobs for me, moved from where she was and given up her own career when I have moved,” Gaffney, who also has a degree in accounting from University of Galway, explains.

Another sad quirk of the country’s current housing market provided Gaffney with an opportunity. When one ghost estate in Tuam that had been left in disarray was finally finished off by a local developer, it meant the couple were able to settle by buying rather than renting.

Then Covid hit, adding another layer of complexity to a move Gaffney knew he always wanted to make.

“Even as a kid, I had something for Rovers,” he explains. “Tuam Celtic have green and white Hoops, there’s Celtic of course, but it was more than that.

“They always brought good crowds with them, the fans would have flares going off. Playing in the league with Limerick, you would see Rovers players and they always looked the part. Then you join, you get a real sense of it here, and it is just a proper football club.

My experiences of English football were more cut throat, lads would be travelling to clubs and not from the area. I was one of them, sure. There might be a car pool or staying over in a hotel a couple of nights a week.

“Rovers nearly feels like a Gaelic club atmosphere. It feels more community based. It’s hard to put a finger on it.

“I suppose it’s easy to say we all get on too when you win most weeks,” Gaffney adds. “It’s a lot easier to get on with lads when you’re winning.”

Last year could hardly have gone any better for the striker, who not only led the line with 15 goals – three in Europe – but performed with verve and tenacity.

That renaissance in 2022 is all the more impressive considering an Achilles injury during his first campaign back left him “living on a bike doing recovery” and wondering about what the future would hold.

“Honestly, I didn’t know if I was going to make it back from that,” he admits. “It wasn’t even that the injury was that bad.

“You’re kind of thinking to yourself, ‘I’m in my 30s, I haven’t played much football for six months and I’m going to be out for another six months’. You know, you do start thinking time could be catching up with you.

“Football, ye know, it’s hard to explain football. How things can happen for you. There are also not many players that make it past 34,” he adds, that birthday coming in October.

“You know what’s going to happen: if you don’t do the business, they will find somebody else,” Gaffney, who explains how he often watches his matches back two or three times on LOI TV in order to dissect his own game, adds.

“That’s the job you’re in. You can’t be keeping people along for sympathy or because they did well in the past. If you’re not doing the job that you are paid to, someone else will get a chance to show they can do it.”

Ryan Byrne / INPHO Ryan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO

That’s the nature of the beast, even for a club that has got a strong connection within the dressing room. Rovers are targeting an historic four-in-a-row of league titles, as well as hoping to progress in Europe after last season’s Europa Conference League group stage campaign, and boss Stephen Bradley has added reinforcements.

Striker Johnny Kenny, formerly of Sligo Rovers, has joined on loan from Celtic. Gaffney has been buoyed by the teenager’s arrival, especially as he is now a housemate during the couple of nights a week that he spends in the club house which is within walking distance of Roadstone.

“Apparently it’s the culchie house, which for some of the Dublin lads means anyone from outside the M50,” Gaffney jokes, of the digs he also shares with Lee Grace, Liam Burt (another new signing from Bohemians) and Leon Pohls.

“Johnny is mature, he can stand up for himself and is a serious athlete,” Gaffney continues. “He uses his body really well. I wasn’t like that at 19, Jesus no, I was hiding out on the wing waiting for soft ball.

“I wasn’t doing what he as at that age, I think he will be really good for us.”

Derry City are viewed as the main challengers given their rise under Ruadihri Higgins last term, finishing second and lifting the FAI Cup.

Gaffney expects another battle for supremacy as they get their campaign underway away to Sligo Rovers tonight, 24 hours after the Candystripes drew 1-1 with St Patrick’s Athletic.

“Last year it caught up with us in the end as we didn’t give a good account of ourselves in the group stages, we were chasing the league and we had to, because if we didn’t, it would have given Derry a leg up,” he reasons.

“They’re well backed as it is now with their owner so if they got the league and the money that comes with the Euro run, they could be hard to stop.

“You have to win the league.”

That’s the benchmark for Gaffney and Rovers once again.