Shamrock Rovers' Gary O'Neill relishing Aviva date

Andrew Dempsey reports from Tallaght Stadium

Shamrock Rovers midfielder Gary O’Neill admits that he is relishing Sunday’s FAI Cup showdown with Dundalk at the Aviva Stadium.

The former UCD captain has impressed since joining the Hoops in July, and he now has a FAI Cup Final to look forward to against the Lilywhites.

“I’m really excited for it. I go to the cup final every year as a fan – as a neutral,” the Kerry native told extratime.ie.

“I’m a fan of the league so I go every year and I’d think I’d love for that to be me so I’m really looking forward to it.

“It’s really exciting but there’s pressure that comes with it. But we’ve got to deal with the pressure.

“The record behind it is that Shamrock Rovers haven’t won it in a few years, and we want to be the group to bring that back. We want to be the ones that get them back to the top and where they belong.”

With it being 32 years since Shamrock Rovers last FAI Cup crown, O’Neill insists that the gap has no bearing on the Hoops mentality heading into Sunday afternoon’s showdown.

“It’s not something that we’d ever really speak about. We’re well aware of it and we want to put it right but as a group we don’t really pay much attention to it.”

The 24-year-old added; “I’m sick of saying it now, to be regarded as a top team you’ve got to win trophies and you’ve got to be remembered for doing something.



“Momentum is the key word and we have that going into the cup final. We’re scoring goals and keeping clean sheets; you can’t do much more than that.  

“We’re on a great run of form and we’re playing with a great deal of confidence. The beautiful thing we have here is that once we keep clean sheets, we’re very confident that we’ll win games.

“The players we have in the final third, you saw that with Jack tonight (Friday) – he’s capable of doing that in a split second so we just need to keep doing what we’re doing.”

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