Springfield Ramblers new u18 team

Best of luck to the new S.Ramblers u18 team that will play in the first division in the Cork youth league. This is a new team made up of u16 and u17 players some who never played soccer last year, so its exiting times for these lads.

The management team is Tony Girasole and Blondie Macelhone. Tony has great experience as he worked under Pat Dolan with Cork City F.C. and picked up a lot of valuable tips under Dolan. Tony has promised not to play the Italian defensive way and wants to play open free flowing football the Brazilian way. Blondie was a legend soccer player with Springfield and Cobh town. A very tough tackling full back and we are delighted that he has come back to be Tony’s right hand man.

Niall Abbott has come back to help coach the team and has put together a team of coaches. Jason Abbott, Shane Hallahan and Dave Curran all current Cobh Ramblers players. In fact all these players were part of the successful u16 national cup winning team and fair play to them to come back and help out the club.

The team are training twice a week for the last month. Blondie has taken the team every Monday for strength and conditioning work and train every Wednesday for the soccer drills. They have played three games to date, winning two and drawing one. It will take time for this team to gel as they have never played together as a team before.

Tony has been very busy off the field and wants to do things as professional as he can. A new set of tracksuits, warm up tops and a brand new playing kit has being got and thanks to all the sponsors who all contributed. Supermacs, Grand Italia Pizzeria, Mimmos Restaurant, Subway Middleton, Titanic Grill Restaurant, Garveys Supermarket, Cobh Arts Association and Henry Black Limousines.

Many thanks to Cobh Ramblers manager Steven Henderson who took training last Wednesday for two hours and put the lads through their drills. The lads were delighted to learn from such a great manager. Home games will be played in John Murphy memorial park every Saturday at 2.00pm.