The failure of St Johnstone to lure Paul Cook from Sligo bodes well for the champions

PAUL COOK’S decision not to trade Sligo for St Johnstone may have been almost as well received in south west Dublin as the Showgrounds yesterday, with the SPL outfit’s inability to lure the 44-year-old away from the League of Ireland club providing a strong indication that Shamrock Rovers’ brightest and best won’t be decamping en masse to Scotland over the coming months.

After initially persuading St Johnstone chairman Geoff Brown that he was the man for the job and then biding his time while the two clubs agreed a compensation package believed to have been worth around €35,000, Cook ultimately didn’t feel the package on offer was worth uprooting for.

There were suggestions in Scotland yesterday that restriction upon his freedom to appoint his own backroom staff had been at the heart of the proposed deal collapsing, but Brown pointedly denied that and it seems that a club which is regarded as well run and careful with its money simply didn’t want to spend more than it felt it had to, either on Cook or the budget for players he is reckoned to have wanted, while the Englishman didn’t feel like completing such a significant move on what might have been regarded as “the cheap”.

The saga appears to add weight to the increasingly widely held view that the SPL is not exactly a financial powerhouse these days and with things as tight as they are here in Ireland, that’s not likely to be viewed as an entirely bad thing.

As he pondered Shamrock Rovers’ next step in the wake of a title success that underlines the club’s return to the top of the Irish football pile, chairman Jonathan Roche certainly didn’t seem overly concerned that many of the squad that has delivered so impressively on the pitch this year might be looking to follow the likes of Noel Hunt, Seán Dillon or Graham Gartland to Scotland.

And asked about the future of Michael O’Neill, who provided his firmest indication to date in the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s win in Belfield that his preference is to stay and build on his success to date with Rovers, the Roche insisted: “I’ve always been confident that he would stay although clearly if he gets a really big offer from somewhere, if England or Wales – or obviously Northern Ireland is the one that keeps getting mentioned – were to come in for him then we’ll just have to accept that he’s done a great job for us and look to move on.”

Even before O’Neill’s current deal expires at the end of the year, though, Roche is hoping the manager can squeeze another achievement out of a group that has already won the title and Setanta Cup while becoming the first Irish club ever to reach the group stages of a European competition.

“Well, we’ll enjoy Friday night and hopefully finish the campaign off with a win but I suppose the real aim would be to pick up a couple of points from the remaining Europa League games, that’s something that would help the club’s coefficient and help to ensure that we’re seeded in the early rounds again next year.

“Beyond that the aim is to use the experience that we – not just the players but everyone at the club – have gained over this year, because we’ve learned on and off the pitch with every game, to move forward. The aim is to do as well as we can in the league here every year and to improve in Europe.”

There has been the inevitable talk of Rovers enjoying a period of sustained dominance again but Roche reckons the overall playing field may be a little too level for that.

“I think that the good players will be spread out evenly enough amongst the top teams, that you’re going to have a strong Sligo Rovers and Derry City, a Cork City now that they’re going to be back in the Premier Division and a couple of other Dublin clubs.

“But there’s certainly an opportunity for Shamrock Rovers to be up there competing for trophies every year for the next few years.”

It’s not so long since Shelbourne looked to be in a similar position and after a few difficult years, they will at least compete at the top table again next year.

Alan Mathews expressed satisfaction yesterday at the manner in which his players put an end to the uncertainty of the previous few weeks by beating Finn Harps to clinch promotion and insisted that the bulk of the current squad will be at the club again next season.

“It’s great for (club chairman) Joe Casey and all of the other people who have been so loyal to the club over the last few years,” he said, “and it’s a fitting reward for the team who have been great this year.

“They’re a good bunch of players and we still have a couple of things to aim for this year – we can win the title on Saturday night against Cork and then there’s a cup final to think about – but after that there’ll be every opportunity for the players who have got us back up to the Premier Division to represent the club in that division next season.”

* The PFAI has confirmed that Roy Keane will be the special guest at the organisation’s end-of-season awards on November 12th at the Burlington hotel, Dublin. Details of tickets for the event are available at pfai.ie.