3 months ago
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Caernarfon Town manager Richard Davies says it is unfair that the club’s fans will be unable to watch their Europa Conference League qualifier away to Legia Warsaw.
The Canaries have reached the second qualifying round and will face Polish giants Legia, with the first leg on Thursday.
But the game will played behind closed doors after Legia were sanctioned by Uefa following crowd trouble during their match against Aston Villa in the same competition last season.
“That’s the most disappointing thing for everyone at the club,” Davies told BBC Sport Wales.
“We’ve been able to have such a great experience out in Belfast and the fans were phenomenal.
“The scenes at the end were something we’ll cherish forever.
“I think it’s unfair that the away supporters are being punished for something that somebody else has done.
“That’s really frustrating but it is what it is and in the home match we’ll try and get as many as we can into the ground.”
Caernarfon, the best supported side in the Cymru Premier, had the support of 400 travelling fans for the first qualifying round trip to Northern Ireland to face Crusaders.
That was Caernarfon’s first European trip and now the north Wales club face a daunting test against the 15-times Polish champions.
“We know the task ahead is going to be a huge one,” Davies said.
“I think they are the most decorated side in the competition so it’s not going to be easy at all.”
Last Thursday’s memorable penalty shoot-out win over Crusaders in Belfast is still very much fresh in the mind.
Caernarfon had won their home leg 2-0 the previous week and despite losing 3-1 on the night in the second leg at Seaview, won 8-7 on penalties.
“It was a rollercoaster of emotions during the game,” Davies said.
“Massive relief to get it over the line – I thought we’d thrown it away at one point, but I’ve got to give credit to my players to show the resilience and the grit just to see it out.
“When we went up 1-0 I thought that should be us done, but for them to score two early goals in the second half got us worried and then the momentum played a part and they got that third.
“To be fair I think we weathered it then and in extra time. I thought we were the better side, but it’s a lottery when it comes to penalties and I certainly came home with more grey hairs than I did going there.”
Davies says his squad, who are semi-professional, will not have time to train before Thursday’s first leg
“Having had knocks and everything the lads need time to recover so most of our preparation will now been done through presentations and analysis and showing clips to the players,” Davies added.
“As much as we’d have loved to, being part-time we haven’t got the ice baths and everything that goes with it.
“That’s the challenge in itself, but we’ve just got to try and do the best we can and go with that.
“We’ve got all the management team watching their last five games.
“They played their first home game on Saturday night which I watched and yes it’s more about having an idea about the style of play, any patterns that we can pick up, their main strengths.”
Caernarfon’s preparations for the first leg in Poland have been further complicated by the global IT outage which has been described as “one of the worst IT outages in history.”
“It’s been a bit of a nightmare if I’m honest,” Davies said.
“We didn’t have any confirmation until late Friday afternoon if we were going to be playing Thursday or Wednesday and then we had the outage on Friday so group bookings couldn’t be done over the weekend.
“Logistically it’s been a bit of a nightmare, but hopefully we’ve sorted something out. “
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