Richie Towell believes Shamrock Rovers will be extremely wary of the threat posed by NK Celje on Thursday despite overcoming the Slovenians in the Europa League qualifiers last summer.
This time round, the sides will meet in a one-off league phase fixture at Tallaght Stadium on matchday two of this season's UEFA Conference League.
Last year, Stephen Bradley's side edged past Celje 3-2 on aggregate in the third qualifying round of the Europa League, having initially lost 1-0 in the away leg.
Towell played in the final stages of the 3-1 second leg victory in Tallaght last August and based on the evidence of those minutes, he reckons the Hoops will be in for a tough match against the side managed by ex-Liverpool and Spain winger Albert Riera, as they look to bounce back from a 4-1 defeat at Sparta Prague in their opening game of six in the league phase.
"I just remember not getting a touch of the ball. They were excellent, honestly," Towell told the RTÉ Soccer Podcast.
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"Not that we celebrated when we got them in the draw. When you're looking at the draw you always earmark a team... 'I wouldn't mind getting them'... obviously you see an AEK Athens or a Steaua Bucharest, one of them teams, Ludogorets, you don't want to be getting any of them.
"And you see Celje, and you think Slovenian league, we'll have a go of that. (But) they were absolutely brilliant.
"I couldn't believe how good they were. In their home leg, we barely got a touch of the ball the whole game.
"They probably should have come into the away leg a couple of goals up. We were very fortunate that we were still in the tie and then obviously when we took them back to Tallaght Stadium, we ended up getting the job done.
"So they're a really, really good side and it'll be a game that Stephen Bradley and his men won't be taking lightly at all because they've been there before."
Former Shamrock Rovers goalkeeper Barry Murphy added that the Hoops will need to pick up at least a point given they have tough fixtures to come against AEK Athens and Shakhtar Donetsk in their following two Conference League fixtures.
"They definitely have to pick up something from it," he said.
"When you look at Shelbourne, it's probably front loaded in terms of points you could get and it's the other way round for Shamrock Rovers, they'll be looking at the end fixtures to maybe pick up their points.
"But as Richie said, they were so good in that first leg over in Celje and Rovers kept it to 1-0 - Leon Pohls was excellent that night - to bring it back and win 3-1... still a little bit of needle there with Albert Riera, who had a lot to say about Shamrock Rovers' style of play didn't he?
"But they were excellent in that game, Shamrock Rovers, and caught (Celje) on the counter-attack, caught them off guard and probably won't be able to do that again. But Rovers have the players to go out and get something in this game and they probably will need to pick up something."
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