While Shelbourne have the chance to extend their European adventure in the upcoming Conference League play-off against Linfield, head coach Joey O'Brien was disappointed to lose what he dubbed a "monster game" against St Pat''s Athletic in the FAI Cup third round.
Goals in each half from Mason Melia and a Chris Forrester penalty saw Stephen Kenny's side progress in the competition.
On Thursday next, Shels and the Irish League champions renew acquaintances after earlier meeting in the first round qualifiers of the Champions League. But for O'Brien a domestic cup exit was not what he wanted as the lead-up to that Tolka Park clash.
"As I said to them in the dressing room before the game, this was the biggest game of our week," he revealed to RTÉ Sport after the Richmond Park loss.
"We wanted to use the hurt and the disappointent we felt on Tuesday (in defeat to Rijeka) to really motivate us and have a right cut off this monster game. Maybe there was one or two of them looking ahead to Thursday night. Ultimately if you're like that there is no team that good or no team that bad that you're able to do that in this country.
"You'll take your learning from it and I'll watch the game back. We'll plan for Linfield from Monday onwards but it was a really disappointing night as I didn't think we put on a performance. We've had great support from our fans over the last couple of weeks travelling around the world for us but it was just disappointing we gave them that performance."
While O'Brien reflected on a below-par showing he still felt his side had opportunities to get themselves on the scoreboard.
"We started really well, got on the ball, got playing and created a couple of great chances at the start of the game," he said.
"When you make those chances you've got to take one of them and that then sets out a different game. We then lost our way a little bit, lost possession, I didn't like our angles in receiving the ball and moving the ball up the pitch. They got a little bit more possession and we had some cheap turnovers and they got the goal.
"Going in at 1-0 I always thought there would be chances for us but we concede a penalty, a really poor goal. At 2-0 it's a hard task to turn it around but we had chances on the break to get back into the game, we just didn't take them."
