Stephen Bradley knew the size of the task and the fighting talk was dialled down in advance of a game where a record 9,684 crowd for a European game was on hand
There was good reason why nobody inside the Shamrock Rovers camp was over-egging things in the build-up.
. But their 38th minute opener was so deflating for the Hoops, considering their honest approach up to that point. If only his shooting was sharper, the hosts would have snatched the lead in a game that ebbed and flowed until that Sparta opener. But the best chance of the half up to that point fell to Farrugia - and he will still be cursing his luck.
Farrugia then drilled a rising shot wide and another high into the North Stand as Rovers applied decent pressure but without any great conviction in their execution.Sparta took the lead seven minutes before the break after capitalising on Rovers’ risk-and-no-reward attempts to play out from the back.
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