In 1949, Rovers established themselves as the most successful football team in the Republic of Ireland, winning forty-four major trophies: six Leinster Major League titles, eleven FAI Cups, seven League of Ireland Shields, six Senior Leinster Cups, two Dublin Cups. Four Intercity Cups and eight LFA Presidents’ Cups. Rovers had won three league titles and a cup by the end of their fifth club league season. Rovers finished the 1976–77 season in 11th place but only won the Leinster Major League Cup for Clubs, [36] with Mick Leach’s 250th career goal proving the difference against Sligo. Shamrock Rovers won a record 19 Irish League titles and a record 25 FAI Cups.
Within five years, massive crowds disappeared from Irish football stadiums, coupled with the disappearance of Drumcondra and Cork Hibs, the decline of some top clubs’ fortunes and the lack of action from the LFA Leinster’s top-flight defeat in the doldrums. They then went on to win a record six FAI Cups in a row in the 1960s, when they were also one of the European club teams to spend the summer of 1967 in the United States, forming the United Football Association.
Indeed, the club played in Tolka Park for several months, and Milltown quickly became an abandoned and ugly spectacle. Halpin noted the demoralising nature of following the homeless club and how the loss of Glenmalure Park came as a real shock to the Shamrock Rovers loyalists, illustrating a new Ireland where property rights had come to matter. In the happy days of the League of Ireland, 28,000 people gathered in Glenmalure Park to watch the Rovers play at Waterford less than 20 years before the sale. In the 2005 Northern Ireland Milk Cup, Cumann Peile Ruagair at Simroig faced Barcelona and made the club and Tallaght on the south side of Dublin proud of their superb performance in a match they were unfortunate enough to lose 2-1.
The last few years have brought stability to a club that has spent over 20 years playing Shamrock Rovers’ home matches at various Dublin stadiums since losing Glenmalure Park in 1987, a disastrous time for Shamrock Rovers the club. The club did not qualify for the UEFA Cup until 1978 after Johnny Giles won the FAI Cup in his first season with the club, and on 13 September at home against Apoel Nicosia, Milltown played their first European game they won 2-0. After making Irish football history in 2011 by becoming our first club to reach the group stage of a major European tournament, Shamrock Rovers failed to take a silver medal in 2012. They suffered a humiliating 5-1 and 4-0 loss to Dublin rivals, St. Patrick’s Athletic and Bohemians. During a time of financial trouble, the club was also promoted to the League of Ireland First Division in 2005, but they won in 2007. They were relegated to the Premier Division again.
