Gavin Cooney

PERHAPS SHAMROCK ROVERS will have played an unwitting role in their own ouster, if indeed it comes to pass. 

Stephen Bradley’s Rovers are the dominant team of their generation and among the greatest teams in the history of Irish football: tonight they may complete an unprecedented five-in-a-row. But if Rovers run of consecutive league titles stops at four, it will be because Shelbourne have shocked the country by completing their fraught, impossible marathon. 

If Shels beat Derry away from home tonight, they’ll be champions. But if they don’t win, Rovers will snatch the title on goal difference with a win at home to Waterford.

And if Damien Duff does indeed lead Shelbourne to the land no right-minded person would have promised at the start of the year, Stephen Bradley might reflect that he helped to make it all possible. 

“I’ve been shaped by many managers and coaches since I was 16 years of age going over to England”, said Duff on the eve of the season’s blockbuster finale.

“Has Stephen played a part? Yeah.

“Yeah. In all honesty I probably curse him most days. Because he got me into coaching and management. It’s all his fault really. What you see, whether it be a positive or a negative right in front of you now, Stephen created it.” 

Duff finished his playing career at Rovers and then joined Bradley’s coaching staff, before then switching focus to the academy, where he coached the U15s and then the U17s, before leaving for a role at Celtic at the start of 2019. The lure of home proved too much for Duff when Stephen Kenny asked him to join the Irish staff in 2020, which lasted a year before Duff walked out and found himself coaching in Shelbourne’s academy. He stepped up to Shels’ first team in 2021 and the rest might just be about to be made into an irresistible kind of history. 

“It’s been the best three years of my life”, says Duff.

“So when I say I curse him it doesn’t mean a negative. I’m in this gig because of Stephen. How I got into it I don’t even know some days. Ask me or you guys, ‘Would Damien Duff be a pundit on TV?’, you’d have said ‘No, he doesn’t speak’.

“‘Would he have been a coach or manager?’

“‘No, because he doesn’t speak and he doesn’t have a personality’, I’m sure you’d have said. But yeah, I am here, and Stephen pushed me towards it. I went and did coaching courses because I was a bit bored and wanted to see what all the craic was about. I was crap, it hurt my ego, so I decided to all of them to see if I could get any better. I did get better, and Stephen pushed me along the way.” 

Duff says they still have a pretty good relationship: it hasn’t been fractured by the pressure of competition. 

“I don’t think I’ve fallen out with him”, says Duff. “There’s been a bit of back and forth in the background. To get where I want to go do, I will fall out with anyone. I’m happy to do that, as you’ve seen. At times, I don’t like the person you become when you go over the white line.  I think you need to have that edge to have success, as individual or as team. Respect? Absolutely the job he’s done there, forget domestically last four years. In Europe, incredible. Respect, yes. And I blame him for stuff as well.” 

Bradley hasn’t been in contact with Duff all week: he makes a point of not contacting an opposition manager in the week leading up to a game. 

“He has been brilliant for Shelbourne and for the league. Anyone that can get anyone speaking about our league, especially in a positive sense, is a good thing”, says Bradley of Duff.

“He has been great for Shelbourne and the league and all credit to him, you could see very early when I worked with him here.” 

When they last worked together, Bradley had it all to prove as a novice manager at Rovers in a league dominated by Stephen Kenny and John Caulfield.

The latter returned to the top tier with new sides this season, and they found a Premier Division now ruled by Bradley. Along with four-straight league titles, Bradley has won an FAI Cup and is steering Rovers through a second European group phase. The profile of a manager in the  League of Ireland skews young, but even by our standards, Bradley is precocious: he won’t be 40 until next month. 

Duff, says Bradley, has forced him to improve.

“It has challenged me, made me be better but I like that, that’s part of what we do”, he says. “It’s important, if you have the same people every week and every year there’s no change in how they play, it can get stale very easily and that’s why I have enjoyed the European games, He has definitely brought some good stuff to the table.” 

 Ahead of one of the highest-stakes domestic nights in years, Bradley exuded calm at his pre-match press engagements. He admitted that he would much be rather in these tense situations than be sailing through the end of the season with nothing to play for, as looked likely earlier this year. 

When Rovers lost 2-0 to Sligo Rovers on the final Friday in June, they were 15 points behind Shels with a game in hand. They were still 13 back – still with a game in hand – at the start of September. But since that Friday night in June, Shels have won just three times: two of which have been in each of their previous two games. Derry, meanwhile, vacated the title picture with defeat against Pat’s last week. 

“When it was 15 points you’re thinking if they go on a run, you’re dead”, says Bradley. “But they didn’t, and we did. Momentum was with us, so I knew we were in it then.” 

Stephen Bradley. Tom Maher / INPHO Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO

They are bang in it now. The FAI have arranged for a replica trophy to be at Tallaght Stadium tonight in the event of a Rovers triumph, and while the game is a sell-out, a couple of rows of seats have been left vacant to guard against a jubilant pitch invasion: Rovers want to protect the pitch for next Thursday’s Conference League tie against TNS. 

Rovers will be without the suspended Dan Cleary tonight, while Rory Gaffney and Sean Hoare are injured. Daniel Mandroiu may yet be fit, having been forced off against Dundalk. 

“This genuinely feels like our normal week since we’ve started Europe”, says Bradley. “Every time we’ve played, people are saying ‘it’s a big game, it’s a big game.’ It’s no different and we don’t prepare any different. We understand that it is the final day and if everything goes your way you could win the league, so you understand that. But in terms of the feel of what we do, it feels like a normal game in that regard.

“I have always said through the years, we end up where we deserve to end up. If we beat Waterford and things happen, we have a chance. But if things happen and we don’t beat Waterford, we don’t deserve to win it. That’s the bottom line. If Shels do their business and we don’t, hats off to them.

“Nothing changes in our mentality. Regardless of whether we win, lose, or draw tomorrow night, and regardless of whether we win the league or not, we will have a glass of wine tomorrow night and then we get ready for Thursday.” 

The Rovers players will be allowed a beer in either celebration or sorrow on Friday night, but preparations turn to TNS on Saturday morning. The club’s player of the year awards night is on Saturday, at which the players won’t be drinking. Such are the trade-offs of European success. 

Regardless of how tonight transpires for Rovers, supporters will be heartened by the fact Bradley is showing no public inclination to leave. 

“[My focus] is to try and win a league first and then try and qualify for the knockout phase [of Conference League] Hopefully we get a little holiday in there at some point for the players. The off-season could be very short, three weeks, then a quick turnaround leading to the new season.

“That’s my focus: try and win the league, qualify for knock-outs, then go away at Christmas and reflect on this season, and make sure we’re better next season.” 

They might yet start next season as champions. 

Shamrock Rovers vs Waterford: KO 7.45pm; Live on RTE News Channel

With reporting by David Sneyd