Preview | Cobh Ramblers v UCD

Cobh Ramblers return to St Colman’s Park this Saturday night, hosting UCD at 19:00. The Rams are in flying form in the First Division, coming into the tie on the back of four league wins and clean sheets. The past week saw Cobh earn 1-0 wins against both Drogheda and Shamrock Rovers II, with Naythan Coleman and Conor Drinan scoring the respective goals in each.

The Students are also one of the league’s form sides, securing wins against Wexford, Cabinteely and Athlone since the restart. They suffered defeat to Galway earlier this week however. The Dubliners were 1-0 victors when the sides met back in March and the Rams haven’t beaten UCD since July 2017. While the sides sit sixth and fifth in the league table, both teams are only three points of joint leaders Drogheda and Bray. The Rams, alongside Bray, have the best defensive record in the league which could prove vital given the likelihood of goal difference influencing the league table.

Young attackers Colm Whelan and Yoyo Mahdy will be ones to watch on the night, along with former Sligo duo Liam Kerrigan and Jack Keaney who have impressed for the Belfield side this season.

In team news, the game is likely to come too soon for captain Pierce Phillips and loanee Darragh Crowley. They have returned to light training but the trip to Athlone the following weekend is a more likely return date for the duo. Defender Kevin Taylor has returned to the squad this week after a recent absence, with manager Stuart Ashton without any further injuries or suspensions. U19 players Chris O’Reilly, Cathal Crowley and Jack Leonard have continued to train with the first team and may be involved once more this weekend.

Speaking before the game Ian Turner spoke of the recent good run of form, and how he believes there is still better to come from this Ramblers side

“There’s definitely a good atmosphere around the place at the moment, obviously when you’re winning games. But we believe that there’s a lot more to come from us. We can actually play better I feel. Even though we’re winning games, we can still improve and push on further. We don’t really fear anyone at the moment, we’re putting in the hard work and we feel confident. Our aim is promotion and as we win games people will talk about that more and more but it’s still very early, there are a lot of big games yet to come. We’ll take each game as it comes and see where that takes us.

In the last few years we would go up against the top teams and hope that we might get something out of the game. Now that we’ve played every team and seen them all, I don’t think we should fear anyone else. We back ourselves whoever we play, including this week against UCD. They’re a good side but we’re at home, we’ll look to impose our game on them and keep up our good run.”

Saturday’s game remains closed to supporters due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and is being streamed on the Cobh Ramblers TV YouTube channel by Relivvit. Kick-off is at 19:00 in St Colman’s Park.