Gavin Cooney reports from Tallaght Stadium

STEPHEN BRADLEY WAS left to rue the booking of Richie Towell for diving when bearing down on goal in Rovers heroic but insufficient 2-1 win at home to Bulgarian champions Ludogorets in the Champions League second qualifying round tonight. 

Ludogorets, who have made the group stages of the Europa League for six seasons running and have won all of the last 11 Bulgarian league titles, beat Rovers 3-0 in the first leg of the tie last week, but Rovers took a 2-0 lead through Aidomo Emakhu with two minutes to go tonight, fuelling belief that they could improbably send the tie to extra time. Instead they were struck with a sucker-punch at the beginning of injury time, against a Ludogorets side that saw midfielder Show sent off early in the second half. 

Bradley, though proud of his players’ performance, could not hide his anger at a refereeing decision shortly after Ludogorets’ saw red. Richie Towell, sent through on goal by Graham Burke, went to ground on the edge of the box and in the presence of Ludogorets defender Zan Karnicnik, who had been booked earlier in the game. The referee, however, booked Towell for diving. 

“I thought we were brilliant, I thought we were excellent”, said Bradley after the game. “It’s everything you’d want from your team. On a night like tonight against that level of opposition, I thought they were brilliant. I thought the referee’s decision when Richie was in on goal was a massive decision in the game. I’ve seen it three or four times and it was a foul. The fourth official was actually saying it was a foul for us, the linesman was saying it was a foul, but somehow the referee points the other way. Richie was in on goal, I don’t see why he’d go down. You need those big decisions to go your way in games. It’s small margins at this level.”

Captain Ronan Finn, meanwhile, mingled pride with disappointment. 

“The plan was to get one goal and we did and then reassess to get two and eventually we did. All of a sudden you start to believe and it’s taken away from you and that’s the ultimate blow.

“They have won the Bulgarian league for 10 years running and their budget is through the roof so we’re taking about another moral victory. But we wanted to win the game and we did that. I thought the game was tough last week, they dominated the ball and possession and for 35 minutes we couldn’t get to grips with them and were 2-0 down by the time we did.

“We had a better shape about us today and we caused them problems. You look at 2-0 with two minutes to go and we were punishing them, but they took that late chance. They are group stages every year for a reason. But we wanted to go 1-0 up and take it from there. They had a man sent off but we probably didn’t do enough when they were down to 10-men and they nearly became more damgerous as they hit us on the counter.

“That is the belief: you see the dressing room and it’s disappointed because standards are high and we’re not used to losing the last few years. Before the game nobody gave us a chance but you never got into a game planning to lose. Now we have the consolation of the Europa League.” 

Rovers are out of the Champions League but not out of Europe: next week they face North Macedonian champions KF Shkupi in the first leg of their Europa League third qualifying round tie. If they win that they’ll advance to a play-off round to make the group stages of the Europa League, while also guaranteed a place in the Conference League group stage should they lose. 

Lose to Shkupi and they’ll drop to the play-off round of the Conference League.