Rhyl will face Bohemians in the first round of the Intertoto Cup on 21st June.
1st leg in Dublin ... get your ferry tickets now!

Alternatively, you could try Ultonia's entrant (third placed Cliftonville, I guess) taking on the might of Suomi. There's a prize Danish opponent waiting for the winner, while Rhyl or Bohs get Latvia or Iceland.

I'll stop now before getting too carried away.

Yes but the real carrot for Rhyl/Bohs is the prospect of a match against Hibs if they progress to the third round ... presuming Hibs beat the Faeroes/Swedish entrant.

Dunc, according to Wikipedia Lisburn Distillery are the province's representatives and they'll play Turun Palloseura - Bombanero to thread ...

Thanks Jorge. Sporting Lisburn in Tornio has a ring to it.

Tornio's about 800km too far north - 'Turun' means 'of Turku'. TPS are rubbish, but have a lovely ground and pots of money.

Can we expect any sectarian ridiculousness from the Lisburn fans? Will there be any lisburn fans?

I can't believe Rhyl's luck, whenever Bangor qualify for Europe the destination's main attraction seems to be a tractor factory or a paper mill or some other industrial beauty.

I have no doubt we'll get another skilful team from an unpronouncable Baltic location this time.

Even Bangor's home leg will be rubbish, 1,000 of us in a 9,000 seater stadium.

Bomba- after my footballing and geographical blunders to date don't treat this as authoritative, but LD are not one of the well supported Irish League clubs. I doubt they'll need more than one coach from the airport.

Celebrity fan? John Cole, of hondootedly Mossus Thotcher and Graun-editing fame. But he's about 85 so probably isn't hardcore any more.

One coach is an impressive following in Finland. TPS often offer their fans free travel and don't beat that. Celebrity TPS fans are generally ice hockey players, along with text pest former foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva.

Lisburn fans might like (or not) the fact that the only bar in the ground at veritas Stadium is called St patrick's pub. Not sure what they do with it during European games, but for domestic matches you can get merrily plastered watching the football from the balcony.

Dunc, wasn't Distillery's ground destroyed during the Troubles? Did they retain any of their original Belfast-based support after the move to Lisburn?

As ursus has now turned up, I should mention that Saku Koivu is one of Tepsi's fans and I think owns a chunk of the hockey club. Seppo Sairanen, who no longer has a fraud conviction, is the owner of the football side.

Lisburn sound like a much more interesting club, from their wiki entry.

Ursus- sadly a lot of the support drifted away after the ground was burnt down in 1971, with the club needing to groundshare elsewhere in Belfast for the rest of the 70s. They also tended to prop up the table in this period.

Linfield would be the best supported IL club in Lisburn, followed by Glentoran.

Duncan Gardner wrote:

QUOTE:
Linfield would be the best supported IL club in Lisburn, followed by Glentoran.

Yep, when my father lived in Lisburn he wasn't even aware that Distillery came from Lisburn - that might say more about my dad than Lisburn but then again ...

I always found it Ironic that whilst stationed out in Belfast with the Welsh Guards, it was Cliftonville that my Father went to watch if he had a chance.

Remember folks, this is the last ever Intertoto Cup competition this year. UEFA Cup being expanded from 2009/10.

It's been an interesting season so far for Bohemian FC... we've started winning and after 6 games, we're 2nd in the league and have won all our away games including the... ahem... big derby... against Shamerock WoeFers.

Rhyl in European competition has a nice ring to it. I suspect there'll be two days that you wouldn't like to travel on the Holyhead ferry in June.

Funny thing was that Bohs didn't send a representative to the draw, so word filtered out via a messageboard from a Rhyl supporter who got a text message from the Rhyl Manager in UEFA.
Still getting used to this new board.