The Rams will look to get back to winning ways on Friday night as Munster rivals Treaty United travel to St Colman’s Park for the opening game of the second quarter of the 2023 campaign.
Sitting fourth after the first round of fixtures is a pretty picture for Cobh but a run of one win in five will look to be improved upon. Last week saw a disappointing 2-0 loss at Athlone in the Midlands.
These two sides have already met twice this year with the Rams winning the league clash 3-0 and the Munster Cup semi-final 3-2, both in Limerick. These were first ever defeats inflicted on Treaty by Cobh but the Shannonsiders do still boast an unbeaten record at St Colman’s Park in their short two year history.
The Limerick men currently sit ninth in the table, and come into the tie on the back of a 2-0 loss at Finn Harps. Their first win of the season came the week prior to that, at home to Longford, and Tommy Barrett’s men will look to gain inspiration from that result in Cobh.
There are plenty of familiar faces for Ramblers fans among the Treaty squad. Goalkeeper Shane Hallahan is of course a Cobh native who spent his entire career at Wanderers and Ramblers up until joining Treaty this year and cementing himself as their number one. Ben O’Riordan, Stephen Christopher, Lee Devitt and Anthony O’Donnell are other Treaty men who’ve given proven service in the Claret & Blue in recent years.
Manager Shane Keegan gave his thoughts on the game and the season so far earlier this week,
“We’re looking to bounce back from what was a very disappointing result last week in Athlone. We just weren’t at our usual intensity, the levels that we know we are capable of. That being said, if you were to say it would be week 9 before our first major blip of the season I would have taken that. We’ve played everybody once and my opinion is that Galway, Waterford and Bray should pull away over the course of the season, leaving the rest of us to battle out for two play-off spots. There is little between those other sides and it’s about squeezing results out of these games. It will create a fascinating season with possibly almost everybody still in the fight for play-off spots late in the year.
This week we also saw the LOI attendance figures come out and it was absolutely brilliant to see Cobh Ramblers sitting fourth in that First Division table (average attendance of 1,394 to date). A huge thanks to everyone who plays a part in that, from our own board, volunteers and media to our supporters. To see fans coming out in those numbers is incredible.“
Kick-off on Friday is at 19:45, with the game being streamed live on LOITV here.
Online tickets are available to purchase ahead of the tie here