SHAMROCK ROVERS boss Michael O’Neill said he was proud of the effort put in by his young side against Juventus in Tallaght last night, but conceded that there was an overwhelming sense of disappointment too as “you can’t get away from the fact that, in the end, we lost the game”.

His side, he said, had struggled to settle into the contest after conceding a goal just three minutes in and had been a little fortunate not to fall further behind during that difficult opening spell. But, he insisted, the players had worked hard to get back into things and had no reason to be ashamed after losing to such strong opposition.

“There was a lot of effort and commitment but clearly conceding so early in the game was a problem,” he said, “and for 20 minutes or so we were on the ropes, but I thought after a while we got a bit beyond that and early in the second half we were coping a lot better.

“But the second goal came at a time when we looked to be forcing things a bit and that we might have got something from it but that’s down to the quality they have, the more you push forward the more you’re exposed because they have the players to capitalise on the space you leave.

“The goals are a disappointment. We’d talked beforehand about the need to regroup quickly in particular situations and I don’t think we did that for either goal.

“I think when we watch them back on video, we’ll feel that they were both preventable. But it’ll be a learning experience for us. Hopefully, we’ve seen things out there that we can incorporate into our own game.”

O’Neill conceded that the tie is now beyond them, but said that they would still look to take something from the game in Modena next Thursday.

“We’ll look to do ourselves justice,” he said. “We’re not going to worry about tonight’s result. We’ll be realistic and realise that we’re not going to progress from this tie so we’ll enjoy the experience but we’ll try put in a strong performance.

“Tonight was difficult for the lads. When we lost the goal I did fear how we might react to that. Our lads are young part-time players.

“They need to have belief during the game and we never really got that tonight because of the early goal. It took us 15 or 20 minutes to get into the game and we could have been further behind during that time.

“Still, it was a big night here in Tallaght and it showed the progression that has been made and gave an idea of the progression that we still want to make.”