David McMillan says that Dundalk must leave the pitch at the Borisov Arena with no regrets when the full time whistle blows on Wednesday night.

Dundalk are ranked as 9/1 outsiders to pull off a first leg win against BATE Borisov but McMillan insists that it is not in his team’s nature to go to Belarus and try to contain their illustrious opponents.

“I’ve been involved with teams that have played in Europe before that have gone out to sit back and you just end up regretting it afterwards,” he said.

“If we go out and play the way we can, and lose, then you can accept that. What would be tough to take is if we went to Belarus, changed our game plan and lost.

“We’ll shape up to have a go at them,” he added. “We don’t want to go there and sit back and have regrets. We think we can get an away goal and the feeling is let’s have a go at them and come back with a positive result.”
BATE lead the Belarusian Premier League table by 11 points and hav

conceded just four goals in 14 games. That makes for difficult reading if you are a Dundalk fan but McMillan is unsure if too much can be taken from those statistics.

“It’s difficult to know what to expect from BATE,” he said. “We watched their Champions League games from last season and they played a different formation to what they do now and obviously they’ve changed a few players.

“From watching their domestic games from this season, a lot of the teams in Belarus sit off them and they have won games 1–0 and 2–0 so I feel it depends on how we shape up.

“They are obviously a very talented side. They have a lot of Belarusian internationals in their squad and they have a great track record but we’re confident we can go out there and cause an upset.

“We won’t be fazed by Belarus,” he added. “We played in Croatia last year and we have players like Stephen O’Donnell and Ronan Finn who have played in the Europa League group stages so we have plenty of experience.”