The last Irish club to get within one tie of the Champions League group phase was the Shelbourne team of the mid-noughties.
Built by the energetically unreasonable Ollie Byrne, and managed by former midfield dynamo Pat Fenlon, Shels gathered together several of the best players in the League - Jason Byrne, Owen Heary, Wes Hoolahan, Stuey Byrne.
They won five League titles between 2000 and 2006. They peaked in 2004, beating the Iceland champions KR Reykjavik in the first qualifying round of the Champions League and then spectacularly dumping out Croatian side Hadjuk Split, a team not dissimilar in stature to BATE Borisov today.
For the final round of the Champions League pre-qualifying stage, they were drawn to play Deportivo La Coruna. The previous year, Deportivo had reached the Champions League semi-final. They'd won La Liga in 2001.
Tolka Park was packed for the Split game but was deemed capable of holding the crowd. For the Deportivo game they moved to Lansdowne Road.
Stuey Byrne talked to us about the mood in the lead-up to the game. He was detailed to keep tabs of Deportivo's lauche midfield maestro, Spanish international Juan Carlos Valeron. It was a far cry from their bread and butter.
Well, we felt we could do it. Obviously, it was a huge task. I was assigned a specific role. I was to mark Valeron, their playmaker. So I was handed all this video footage to watch. I was watching DVDs of this guy playing against AC Milan, who they'd beaten 4-1 in the previous year's Champions League, and playing against Porto in the semi-final.
And it struck me while watching that we were actually playing these. But you very quickly ground yourself. And that's what Dundalk will do that. Sure they'll celebrate but they'll ground themselves and be professional.
Owen Heary recalled the feeling in a contribution to Eoin Brennan's documentary 'Ollie's Reds'.
The whole lead up to it was like it was proper Champions League football. It felt like you were playing Champions League football. Because you'd have the televisions, you'd have cameras, you'd have the interviews. You'd be getting off the bus and the camera was in your face. It was a totally different setup, a totally different world to what we were used to week-in, week-out.
It was scoreless in Lansdowne Road. The dream was well alive. A 1-1 draw in Deportivo would carry them into the group stage of the Champions League.
They were still 0-0 with 45 minutes remaining in the tie. Deportivo came alive in the second half, blasting in three goals. The second, a screaming long range strike from Victor was the killer.
Shelbourne had already overstretched themselves financially and their spending would catch up with them in two years.
But as long-time Shels supporter Sean Fitzpatrick said, 'to be in a situation to be standing with 30 or 40 people in a greyhound stadium and then 20 years later you're playing Deportivo La Coruna, I mean it's just a dream for all of us... You wouldn't swap that for anything.'
