Shamrockin’

I headed to Dublin to watch Shamrock Rovers v Santa Clara in the Europa Conference League playoff, and it was unreal. 8,023 people packed the ground — a huge turnout for a club of this size — and the energy was electric. Everyone got down, everyone cheered, and you could feel the pride of the whole city behind the team.

I ended up sitting next to the academy section, where all the young boys working their way up through the club got to celebrate a massive milestone with the senior squad. For smaller teams like Shamrock Rovers, making a European league is a huge achievement, and it was incredible to see the club come together as one on a night like this.

Half-time brought the classic dilemma: I wanted food, queued for ages, then bailed because I didn’t want to miss the second half. Lesson learned — for games like this, more food carts are basically a commercial no-brainer.

Even my taxi driver a few days before couldn’t contain his excitement, saying he’d take his two kids. Nights like this show how European qualifiers don’t just matter on the pitch — they bring an entire city together.