Stephen Bradley has challenged his history-makers to ensure no one ever breaks their run of games without defeat.
Shamrock Rovers today made it 31 games unbeaten in the Premier Division when they recorded a comfortable 3-0 win against struggling Waterford.
Now that they have achieved something that no one else has managed in 100 years of League of Ireland football, Bradley wants them to push on and set the bar too high for anyone else to ever clear.
“I’m delighted with the win, delighted with the record and delighted for the players because it’s an unbelievable achievement for them,” he said.
“Hopefully now we can stretch it and make it impossible for someone else to do it in the future.”
Today’s win came courtesy of goals from Rory Gaffney, Gary O’Neill in the first-half and Danny Mandroiu early in the second.
But it didn’t come without cost - as Aaron Greene and the returning Neil Farrugia both limped off injured. Farrugia was just 20 minutes into his first game since last October when he fell to the turf clutching his left hamstring.
It’s the same muscle that he damaged last year while on international duty with the Under-21s and Bradley spoke yesterday evening of his concern for the winger.
“We spoke to everyone from Leinster rugby to teams in Holland and Belgium and England,” he said.
“We spoke to people outside of football - all different sports - to see if we were missing something.
“We’ve been really patient with him and we have to assess him, but it’s worrying that it has happened again. It was actually when he was controlling the ball, that’s when it happened.”
As for today's action, Rovers were in cruise control against a tired Waterford, whose boss Kevin Sheedy once again lacked options on the bench.
He named only four substitutes and started the same 11 that lost last Friday to Dundalk.
They were caught out badly for Rovers’ 13th minute opener.
When the ball hit referee Adriano Reale during a Rovers attack, the whistler blew for an uncontested Hoops drop-ball, as per the recent rule change.
The Blues players appeared to switch off and that allowed Mandroiu the space to play the ball into Gaffney on the edge of the area.
He spun Oluwatunmise Sobowale and drilled his shot low past goalkeeper Paul Martin.
Rovers were excellent going forward and chances fell to lee Grace, Dylan Watts and Mandroiu, before Watts’ lung-busting run and pass on 27 minutes saw Gaffney hit the crossbar from 25 yards.
The Hoops lost Greene to injury on 32 minutes when he was chopped down by Sobowale - a challenge that Bradley felt merited more than just a caution.
“It was a horrendous tackle on Aaron,” he said. “For me, the referee needs to take control of the game and send him off, because it’s a really bad tackle.”
From the resulting free-kick, however, his side doubled their lead. Mandroiu rolled the ball short to Watts, twice his shot was blocked, but the ball ricocheted to O’Neill and he squeezed his shot past Cameron Evans on the goal-line.
It was 3-0 nine minutes into the second-half. Max Murphy slipped the ball to Mandroiu just inside the area and he placed the ball inside the right-hand post.
There was time for some more drama late on. Farrugia, a 68th minute sub, was forced off, leaving the hosts with 10 men for the closing two minutes plus stoppage time.
The original injury last October remains a bone of contention for Bradley.
“We weren’t happy with his workload when he went with the 21s. We weren’t happy with what they did with Neil. He came back injured and he hasn’t been right,” he said.
“Hopefully we can get to the bottom of it over the next couple of weeks, because I think you saw over those 10 minutes what he is going to bring to us when he is ready.”
