Manager Shane Keegan has no regrets despite Cobh Ramblers defeat

COBH Ramblers’ 2023 season has been an unforgettable one, with the club going from the bottom of the table to last year to third this year, while also being moments away from a penalty shootout with Waterford in the playoff final.

“It would have been a hell of a lot more heart breaking for me for us not to turn up tonight and get beat out the gate four or five nil, and not show everybody what we have been about all year,” manager Shane Keegan said after the game.

“I told them before the start if they could turn this into an absolute fight and if they did themselves justice – I could handle any scoreline. That's the way the game went. Tonight was a microcosm of our season. 

We are more than the sum of our parts. It's the most simple way of putting it.

OVERACHIEVING

“We've got some pretty good parts, don't get me wrong, but I still think as a collective we’re more than the sum of our parts. I think they showed that again tonight, they showed it all season long.” 

“30 seconds prior to them scoring, we came damn close to scoring one ourselves,” he explains. “It was a brilliant save, I thought the keeper did absolutely brilliantly. 30 seconds later, the ball is in the back of our own net. They’re the things that happen.” 

On the first half penalty shout that didn’t go their way, Keegan remarks; “We've the mini screen on the sideline and I just I saw that was a penalty, and it was a penalty. I would like to think that's not an opinion, I would like to think that’s fact.

“But we've had too good of a season and too good of a night to get pulled into any kind of squabble over a refereeing decision. I think it would just demean our achievements.” 

With the fans once again providing an excellent atmosphere, Shane discusses the impact they’ve had all season.

“They've been absolutely brilliant. I think it's a two-way thing. I think we've given them something to get excited about and I think they've bought into it fully. They're young, they're loud, they're vibrant.

“They're brilliant to have at games. They were phenomenal in the two legs of the semi-final as well. I think our lads fed off it,” Keegan says. “You look at James' goal in the second leg, you look at the goal we got down in Wexford, lads are running towards the crowd and you're pumping the air and all that kind of thing.

“I stupidly probably lost the run of myself when we scored tonight, as you tend to do, stuff like that happens. I just genuinely believed we were going to get this as far as penalties.

“Now what would have happened from there who knows, but right up until the final whistle went, I just believed something was going to happen, we were going to get it.

“We started this season off with the simple aim of trying to model ourselves on Treaty United, because they had been the standard setters in terms of trying to overachieve and trying to be more than sum of your parts.

“When Tommy [Barrett] got them to qualify in the playoffs the first season, I said there's not a hope in hell he'll repeat the trick the second season. He did, and that shows it absolutely can be done, but it's going to be a big ask. What we did as a group this year is tough to repeat.”