Joey O'Brien calls for clear minds as Shelbourne eye European dream

Shelbourne head coach Joey O'Brien and Ali Coote. Pic: Dan Clohessy/Inpho

Eighteen years to get here. 180 minutes to finish the job.

Shelbourne’s 2004 meeting with Deportivo La Coruna was both the high watermark of that generation and the dam of debt bursting.

A recent screenplay depicting the life of Ollie Byrne centres on the late Chairman fantasising about what might have been achieved had they followed up a scoreless draw by edging the second leg at the Riazor.

All that ensued was a gradual and then sharp decline two years later into demotion to the First Division. 

Little by little, yo-yoing along the way, they reclaimed the Premier Division title last October under Damien Duff.

Everyone at the club is entitled to dream big again, 21 years on. 

Standing in their way of the lucrative league phase of the Conference League are Linfield, a side they’ve already beaten five weeks ago.

Victory in the rematch over the two legs, Tolka on Thursday and Windsor a week later, would mushroom Shels’ prize-money pot to €3.8m and guarantee six extra games between October and December.

Seán Boyd was only guilty of excitability after that 2-1 aggregate win when declaring the potential prize-money would fund his wedding.

Ever since, Joey O’Brien and his players have suppressed the windfall talk, preferring to highlight the prestige.

The manager was even reluctant to categorise this breakthrough on offer as eclipsing the title win they engineered, which he achieved at the time as Duff’s assistant.

“As a younger player, I’d listen to older lads telling me what to focus on and what not to get distracted by,” he said, referencing the emergence at Bolton Wanderers during the European runs under Sam Allardyce.

“I would have passed it onto the younger lads in the changing room moving up my career.

“You can't control that stuff. Those words kind of roll off as kind of cheesy about control and stuff, but ultimately, all you can control is your own performance, your own preparation and making sure you're ready and wanting to attack the game.

“Sometimes if you want something too much it can have a negative effect on your performance.

“This is a skill-based game we're playing in. You have to be clear in your mind and clear in your technique.

“It's that repetition of doing things over and over again. Take the moments because of what you'd done previously, not because you're thinking I want to win for another reason.” 

That they’re facing the same team twice is a quirk of the competition.

By Shels prevailing the first time around, the Champions League path afforded them ties against Qarabag and Rijeka that ultimately resulted in defeats but this fallback to be part of the 36-team league phase was there to be activated.

In favour of David Healy’s Linfield is the fact they’re now in-season, compared to the initial match, and they bounce into the playoff on the back of Conference League wins over Lithuanian champions Zalgiris and Vikingur Gøta from Faroe Islands.

O’Brien got to see Linfield in action last Thursday, as Kieran Offord’s opener set them on their way to beating the latter.

“Linfield are a good team,” added O’Brien.

“We've been obviously watching them since we last played them and most of them played against us.

“They've not changed the way they play but might change it again. They went with two strikers last week.

“They're going to be fitter and match sharper. We’re in for a tough game.

“If you had offered both teams this opportunity at the very start of the European competition, that we'd be playing each other in a knockout game for group football, we’d each have taken your hand off.” 

No time for slippages when the ultimate prize is within touching distance.