Cobh Ramblers fail to fire in home stalemate with Cobh Ramblers

Cobh Ramblers 0 Longford Town 0 

Cobh Ramblers manager Fran Rockett admitted his side were 'flat' as their winning run came to an end with a draw with Longford Town at St Colman’s Park.

The coach oversaw a frustrating game where chances were few and far between.

Ramblers were buoyant coming into the clash between two teams with playoff aspirations following successive victories over Kerry, Treaty United, and Finn Harps. Yet they never really got going against Longford, despite chances falling to Oran Crowe and Dylan McGlade.

Longford held their own, while struggling to break down a defence that was marshalled by Garry Buckley.

“I thought we were flat – I thought we were off it and probably not ourselves,” Rockett said.

“We couldn’t get into a rhythm. For the first five minutes, when we started the game, we didn’t start as brightly as we should have done. Then the injury came and we could never get our flow going, do you know what I mean? We couldn’t get our players on the ball when we needed to, with the shape we had.

“Our game management towards the end of it was great. The lads dug in and we got a point. When you’re off it, the most important thing is that the minimum you get is a point. We’ll move on and not get too downhearted about it.” 

Rockett is keen to place this performance into a wider context, his side’s uptake in form after a start to the year that saw just one win in seven matches.

“There’s a lot of positives in terms of the last four games and we would be here all night talking about them,” he said.

“Sometimes you have to take your medicine. It was a difficult First Division game there. There was very little quality and we had to dig in and roll up our sleeves, and that is what we got from the lads. When you don’t play well, you have to stay together as a team when that creative spark isn’t there. We had to show another side to us. We will lick our wounds and this is not the end of the world.” 

Rockett did praise Longford, a side that went into Friday’s game after defeating high-flying Bray.

“We played a consistent team over the last three games and that was probably evident in how we wanted to play and they wanted to negate that,” he said.

“Sometimes when that happens and when you’re not in a flow, you try to tweak things and you're hoping that this would be one of those games. But Longford set up well and on another night we could have lost with the momentum swings near the end of the game, we played some blind passes to them and gave it away.” 

COBH: Timothy Martin; Callum Honohan, Breandán Frahill, Garry Buckley, Lucas Curtin; Oran Crowe, Mikey Carroll; Rhys Kelly Noonan, Rhys Gourdie; Dylan McGlade, Rhys Brennan.

Subs: Shane Griffin for Frahill (HT); Kai O’Neill for McGlade (67), Wilson Waweru for Noonan (77), Brian Lenihan for Curtin (82).

LONGFORD: Kian Moore; Conor Errity, Daniel McKenna, Taylor McCarthy, Osaze Irhue; Sultan Adenekan, Dean Williams; Andy Paraschiv, Pharrell Manuel, Alex O'Brien; Aaron Doran.

Subs: Jake Hough for Errity (12); Daragh Murtagh for Williams (77), Francis Campbell for Manuel (80), Stefan Ugbesia for Paraschiv (81).

Referee: Declan Toland