With Sligo Rovers celebrating their 90th anniversary this weekend when the “Bit O’Red” host Bray Wanderers at the Showgrounds, many followers of the league have joked that Raff Cretaro has almost been around as long as his current club. First appearing for the West of Ireland club in 2000, Cretaro has gone on to enjoy three spells with his local club, winning almost every major honor the domestic game has to offer, while the Tubbercurry man is currently the clubs second highest goal-scorer in history, a definition of the over-used term “legend”.
Sadly for Sligo Rovers the last number of seasons have been very different to the trophy-ladden campaigns Cretaro has previously enjoyed at the club with relegation scraps becoming the name of the game as opposed to league titles and European football. However, with Ger Lyttle’s team virtually confirmed as safe for another season there is still a unique opportunity to collect some silverware during the club’s big year. Defeating Livingston’s under-20’s in the previous round, Sligo Rovers are now set to travel to Scotland to tackle Motherwell’s kids in the next round of the Irn-Bru cup. A competition Cretaro has never won, the Sligo Rovers legend admitted he has enjoyed the experience of tackling fresh opposition so far, as he spoke to Between the Stripes LOI podcast last night.
“It obviously takes you away from the domestic side of things and it’s great that we still have the chance to win something, the chance to win any silverware is great. We had a league cup semi-final earlier in the year and with it been a home tie we would’ve hoped to get into the final but look we are really looking forward to the Motherwell tie and it’ the first one we’ll be going into very very confident.”
Having featured in the League of Ireland for almost two decades now with Galway United, Bohemians and most prominently Sligo Rovers, questions will always be asked regarding when Cretaro’s last game may be but to the delight of “Bit O’Red” fans the striker last night confirmed his certainty of continuing for 2019.
“I’m definitely going to do another year anyways and look we’ll see how things go between now and the end of the season and hopefully if I’m speaking to you (Between the Stripes LOI podcast) again it will be much more positive (than the last few seasons).”
To hear Raff Cretaro’s interview in full on Between the Stripes LOI podcast you can use the Audioboom player below or alternatively search for the show on your favorite podcast platforms such as Itunes, SoundCloud, Spotify and many more. Cretaro’s interview begins 49:30 into Series 2-Episode 26 of the hit weekly League of Ireland show.
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