Stephen Bradley will raise a glass with wife Emma to toast Shamrock Rovers’ European heroics - once he finally gets home from North Macedonia.
The Hoops boss wasn’t getting too carried away on Tuesday night by his side securing - at the very least - a €3.3m place in the group stages of the Europa Conference League.
Bradley was too busy contemplating another gruelling journey home.
Rovers flew out of Dublin on Sunday to Skopje, but were informed that they couldn’t secure a landing slot in the capital on their return from last night’s 5-2 aggregate win over Shkupi.
So their charter has been re-routed to Shannon and is due to land in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Bradley’s mind is also on a massive Premier Division match on Friday night.
“It’s difficult at the moment,” he said, when asked to reflect on last night’s achievement, “because right away I’m thinking of Derry.
“It’s something when I’m sitting down for a glass of wine with my wife tomorrow night that I’ll think about.
“It’s something we’ve set out to do at the start of the year and we’re going to achieve it.”
He added that his ambitions would not just be limited to qualifying for the group stages.
“We’re going to do our best to get out of the group,” said Bradley.
He was angered once again at his side’s inability to secure a landing slot in Dublin airport - in a repeat of their difficulties ahead of the Ludogorets Razgrad tie.
“We’re really disappointed in that,” said Bradley. “(CSKA) Sofia are flying in and out of Dublin direct (for their match against St Patrick’s Athletic).
“There are serious questions that need to be asked.
“How Irish teams can’t do this and every team that seems to come here can do it, it’s not acceptable.
“Questions need to be asked to the right people.
“I understand travel is chaos for everyone at the moment but it can’t be that both Bulgarian teams are flying in and out of Dublin direct and we have to go out through Shannon, and there’s also the trouble Pat’s were having.
“There needs to be serious questions asked of this.
“It cost us against Ludogorets, I’ve no doubt it cost us, I just hope it doesn’t cost St Pat’s at home because it’s not acceptable.”
While the Europa Conference League group stages are in the bank, Bradley wants his side to secure Europa League qualification.
Rovers face Hungarian side Ferencvaros in the play-offs, with the away tie scheduled for next Thursday.
“Of course, that’s always been our aim,” he said. “We know that in the dressing room, that will be our focus.
“Tonight was about getting back to ourselves in terms of being aggressive in our press, together in our press and limiting them to very little.
“The pleasing aspect is we came here and attacked the game to win it. That takes a lot of character.”
He becomes the fourth manager to guide an Irish club to the group stages, after Michael O’Neill, Stephen Kenny and Filippo Giovagnoli.
“Look, it’s fantastic,” said Bradley. “Like I said, it’s one of our targets, it’s something I said we wanted to improve on.
“We let ourselves down against (Flora) Tallinn last year, although they were a good side.
“We needed to learn from that and it’s made us stronger. It’s something that we set out to go one step further.
“We know next week is a step up again, but the bigger the game, the better we perform.
“It has you on edge, that nervous energy, it has you at your best. It sharpens your mind.
“We’ve shown over the years we’re at our best when we are up against it.
“We’ll focus on Derry and then we’ll move onto that one.”
Badley added that a request to switch the Derry game to the weekend fell on deaf ears.
“We asked to move the game to Saturday or Sunday, and the league have come back and said no, which I found really strange,” he said.
“We’re asking to move it for a day or two. Somehow the league have said, no, it’s not possible, which is really poor for me.”
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