Shamrock Rovers have been fantastic in European competition this season.
While they were eliminated by the better side against Ludogrets in the Champions League, their other performances in that competition and in the Europa League have been impressive.
Their 5-2 aggregate victory over Shkupi earlier this week ensures that they will be playing in the group stages of European football later this year, although which competition that will be in remains to be seen. They will be in the Europa League if they manage to overcome Ferencvaros in their tie over the next couple of weeks, although a place in the Europa Conference League will offer them a nice consolation prize should they fail to do so.
Of course, this continental run has also been balanced with their endeavours in domestic competition. Rovers sit four points clear at the top of the league after a 0-0 draw at Derry City last night, although they are not happy with the way they have been treated by the FAI recently.
Stephen Bradley calls out League of Ireland scheduling
The game at The Brandywell last night came three days after Shamrock Rovers' win over Shkupi in North Macedonia, although Stephen Bradley believes the contest should have been pushed back by 24 hours.
Speaking after the fixture, he said that the League of Ireland should be doing more to help their clubs in the midst of their European runs.
We're talking about promoting Irish football and wanting our teams to do well and we have to understand it benefits everyone in the long run.
We didn't want [the game] off. We just wanted it moved 24 hours like is normal in every country in the world when you have two away European games.
For some reason the league saw fit not to help us and I think that's really, really poor from the league and the people making the decisions and it needs to be looked at.
The league need to step in make a call there and they've shown zero leadership there in my opinion...
Considering the big game we had on Tuesday night, the mental and emotional energy that takes out of you [and] obviously the travel, we'll take a point.
We were always going to tire at some point in the game. Like I said, we had a busy week, a tough week so there was always going to come a point in the game where that showed. And it showed late on in the second half.
But what we did was we showed the character of champions and we stayed in there and saw it out.
Shamrock Rovers will be on the road once again in the coming days, travelling to Hungary to take on Ferencvaros.
They will enter that tie as underdogs, although a good result away from home in the first leg could give them an excellent opportunity to seal a spot in the Europa League when they return to Tallaght the following week.
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