AIRTRICITY LEAGUE SOCCER – PREMIER DIVISION
Shaw ends goal drought with crucial winner
By Daire Walsh
FOLLOWING a difficult season to date in the green and white hoops of Shamrock Rovers, Kildare native Gary Shaw was delighted to finally get off the mark in his club’s 1-0 Premier Division victory over Waterford at the RSC on Sunday.
With the tie delicately poised inside the final-quarter, Shaw combined effectively with fellow substitute Sam Bone to propel Rovers towards their 11th top-flight win of the present campaign.
This brought Shaw’s nine-month scoring drought to an abrupt halt and proved to be an ideal ‘pick me up’ for the Hoops in the aftermath of their agonising Europa League exit to AIK on Thursday.
“It has been a tough week. More so for the lads than myself. Obviously I wasn’t involved in the European games. To go to extra-time at such a high intensity, the lads would have been feeling it yesterday. The manager kept saying ‘it’s about the squad’. The squad will play a part. Last year, I remember it was the same after Europe,” Shaw explained.
“Lads were getting tired and the manager made changes early on in the second half. Luckily for me, I was one of them that came on and got the winning goal. It was a nice header as well and I was just delighted to get the goal and to get off the mark.”
Given he has been restricted to a substitutes’ role for much of 2018 (only seven of his 18 appearances have come as a starter), Shaw has experienced a great deal of frustration in his third season at the south Dublin club.
However, his burning desire to play for Rovers has never waned throughout this period – something that Rovers boss Stephen Bradley openly acknowledged in the wake of their narrow win against the Blues.
“It has been a frustrating season and I’d never deny that. The thing is, you hear people saying different things about going to a different club and stuff. I’ve never swayed my head away from Rovers, because I love playing there. My attitude never changed. my professionalism never changed.
“I just kept working hard and people kept saying to me ‘oh you must be really frustrated’, but I’ve kind of just blanked that all out. Just kind of said ‘when I get my chance I’ll be ready’. That was the case yesterday [Sunday[. It just made it all that bit sweeter for me that people start doubting you and then you go and do that. Get a goal in such an important game.
“When I was called upon I had to be ready and the manager praised me for that in front of the whole group, because certain players would have thrown in the towel the way things have gone for me. But I kept going, I kept working hard. I never changed the way I trained or how I prepared for games.”
Currently on an unbeaten run of five games in the league, Rovers now find themselves just four points adrift of third-place Waterford. This keeps them on course for European qualification in 2019 and Shaw believes it is essential for a club of their size to remain on the overseas circuit.
“It’s a brilliant run of form and it has come at the right time. European games can kind of get in the way obviously of league form. Now that we’re out of Europe, we need to fully focus on the league and get as far as we can in the FAI Cup.
“We need to nail down that European position, because we’ve experienced some great games in Europe over the last couple of years. As a player you want more nights like that and we need to make sure that the league form keeps up, so we can experience that more,” Shaw added.