STEPHEN BRADLEY was left hopping mad after insisting Shamrock Rovers were ‘done’ out of a Champions League showdown with Young Boys.
The Hoops blew Slovan Bratislava away on the night in a fully deserved 2-1 win at a pulsating Tallaght Stadium.
But Roberto Lopes was fouled in the build-up to Vladimir Weiss’ decisive strike that settled the tie in the visitor's favour with 17 minutes remaining.
Rovers boss Bradley fumed: “It’s a definite foul. I know that’s easy to say when it’s the goal that knocked you out.
“But if you get done by a bit of play, with a bit of quality, sometimes you have to take it and accept that.
“But we dealt with that and we got done by a really, really poor decision, an awful decision that cost us.
“They (Slovan) were done. You could sense they were done on the pitch. Physically they were done.”
Bradley had it out with Croatian referee Mario Zebec and added: “The fourth official is saying foul because he sees the forward push him but the ref doesn’t listen to him.
“For such a big decision, it’s an awful decision. But the performance that the players gave has to be up there with one of the best Irish performances.
“We were playing a team who are a really high level. We kept them really quiet, created a lot of chances but ultimately we got done by a terrible decision.
“We knew last week wasn’t us, there were loads of factors with the heat, getting a feel for them which is always the case in Europe.
“We felt we couldn’t press them the way we wanted to but tonight we could, we had them rattled early.
“I’m so proud of the players, and their performance, but I’m gutted for them because we get done.”
Shamrock Rovers will now go into the third qualifying round of the Europa Conference League, the draw for which is on Monday.
