Premier SFC: Alan O'Donovan on what makes Nemo Rangers tick: 'A hard-working and hungry group of players'

Alan O’Donovan has been there and done it with Nemo Rangers, he knows how things roll.

He has five top-tier championship medals with the city side as they are once again in the mix to lift the Andy Scannell trophy.

Tomorrow at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Nemo Rangers take on Newcestown in the McCarthy Insurance Group Premier SFC semi-final (2pm).

Robbie O’Dwyer’s team came through the group stage with three wins, three comfortable enough victories too it must be said against Ballincollig, Douglas and St Michael’s.

The bar is always a high one though around Trabeg.

“We have played in patches, it has been an issue,” says O’Donovan.

“It has been a problem in our three group games this year. We have talked about it. If I knew the solution to the problem, I’d be able to put it in a bottle and sell it to every team in Ireland, but unfortunately it’s a hard thing to put your finger on.

“But look, no team is ever going to put in a 60-minute performance, I suppose, it’s very hard because every team has a purple patch.

“Like against St Michael’s the last day, I think they rattled off six scores on the trot or something like that when they had the wind at their backs. But thankfully we steadied the ship again and we went up and we got a couple of goals and a couple of points.” 

Nemo Rangers have shown remarkable consistency over such a long period of time. They are constantly knocking on the door.

Since their last championship title in 2022, they have lost the last two finals. What is the special ingredient when it comes to consistency?

“It just comes down to a very hard-working group of motivated and hungry players. A good chunk of us have had success before and when you have it you want more of it.

“Then there’s young fellas coming into the team, Bryan Hayes, Colin Molloy, all these guys and they want success as well. So it’s just a very hungry group that are honest. An honest group that works hard and when that translates itself on to the pitch, we just play for each other.” 

The new rules have been a breath of fresh air with some teams having to alternate their style. Not for Nemo Rangers though. They have always played attacking football.

“The new rules have definitely changed the game for the better I would say,” the Nemo Rangers midfielder states.

“Just even seeing the scoring rates go up, there’s probably more goals being scored, more points being scored obviously with two-pointers as well but it has kind of brought, I suppose, a bit more expressive attacking play.

“When I was growing up, the coaches in Nemo also wanted us to play positive football. That’ll be the first thing they always tell us anyway. There’s no rocket science to it. 

"If you have it, look up and kick it and I suppose you can do that a bit more now without the amount of bodies back but I suppose on any given day you just have to play what’s in front of you."

While Nemo Rangers haven’t played competitively in a month, it took Newcestown a penalty shootout to eventually shake off Carrigaline at the quarter-final stage a fortnight ago.

“This year was our first time getting the top seed, every other year we have had a quarter-final. We have trained really hard. We got a good few challenge matches in.

“You can sit back and look at your opponents in their quarter-final but really we just have trained our socks off.

“It’s just up to us to be in the right frame of mind and bring the best version of ourselves into this game. Newcestown are a very dogged, resilient, hard-working side but as well as that they have quality footballers.

“They just keep going, it’s very hard to get over them, so you’re really going to be pushed when you play against them. We’re going to have to be at our best if we want to win this game.” O’Donovan concluded.