Joey O'Brien confirms huge loss for Shelbourne ahead of historic Europa League clash against Rijeka
SEAN IS GONE Joey O'Brien confirms huge loss for Shelbourne ahead of historic Europa League clash against Rijeka
JOEY O'Brien has confirmed that Seán Boyd is out of tomorrow's Europa League clash as Shelbourne bid for history.
Striker Boyd limped out of last week's 2-1 away leg victory over Rijeka in Croatia with a calf problem and has not trained since then.
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O'Brien's side are just 90 minutes away from securing European league phase football
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Shelbourne will be without Boyd who scored 10 goals from 12 league starts last season
Shels boss O'Brien revealed: 'It's a strange one. He is finding it hard to walk and with the quick turnaround he won't be available.
'He started the game really well last week. But that's the name of the game, that is football.
'John Martin came on and done really well. I keep going back to the strength of the squad. That was an example of it.'
Martin grabbed the winner last week, and also came off the bench against Bohemians on Saturday to score and earn Shelbourne a draw.
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And he is now pushing Mipo Odubeko to start tomorrow as Shels look for a result - a draw will do - that would guarantee them a group stage football for the first time in their history.
Progress and they go into the Europa League play-off guaranteed of Conference League group stage football, while even a loss would see them go into a Conference play-off.
But O'Brien stressed that his side have a lot of work to do to progress.
He said: 'Before a ball is kicked, look at where they are at, and where we are at, they are favourites.
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'But two halves done, two to go. We are coming to our place. We would back ourselves to beat anyone here.
'We're coming in tomorrow with a small advantage but we're here to attack the game, we don't see football about sitting in and hoping for the best, you know.
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'It's about attacking the game in front of you. And I think the players that we have, they want to do that.
'So for me to have a game plan, just sitting in and hoping for the best - it wasn't like that as a player, it's not going to be like that now as a coach.'
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