UCC won the Munster Senior League Beamish Stout Senior Premier Division title at the Mardyke with a 1-0 win over Cobh Wanderers, courtesy of Seán McLoughlin’s second-half winner.

For Noel Healy, his management team and players, it marked a terrific end to a season that saw the club claim the league and Collingwood Cup in the same year for the first time.

“It wasn’t the greatest of matches, but we made it difficult for them,” Healy said afterwards.

“They needed to win the game and they put a lot of pressure on our defence, but I thought Seán O’Mahony and Seán McLoughlin, as well as our keeper Cathal O’Hanlon were excellent and they really took the pressure off us. Key to the win was we kept the number of set-pieces for them, particularly corners, to a minimum.”

Wednesday night’s win was UCC’s 10th on the bounce, a magnificent run of games which set them up for victory, but before the Christmas break the Students were off the pace after a poor start to the campaign.

“We didn’t get the best of starts to the season, and we had just two points after five games while Corinthians had 15. But we rallied and won 12 of the next 13 and we dug deep when behind in games against Corinthians and Ringmahon, when we were down to 10 men, and came out on top.

“We had put points on the board since Christmas and I think a little bit of experience kicked in after losing the league on the last day of last season, and I think we learned a lot from that, and I learned from that.”