Home sweet home as Rovers to host Sligo

HOME at last. It might be more deep south than southside but when Shamrock Rovers take to the pitch in the Tallaght Stadium this evening (kick off 8.05pm, all other games 7.45pm) it will finally bring to an end 22 years a-wanderin’ since they played their last game at Milltown before the wrecking ball put paid to the rich history of one of Irish football’s most cherished grounds.

Appropriately, Sligo Rovers, in 1987 the last visitors to Glenmalure Park, are the first visitors to Tallaght, amid the kind of hype and hoop(s)la that recalls another sort of homecoming, when the famous Dublin club returned south of the river to play at the RDS in 1990.

With post-Italia ‘90 football mania still rampant, 25,000 people turned up for Rovers’ opening game against St Pat’s that day.