Friday night sees a first ever meeting between Cobh Ramblers and Treaty United, as the Munster clubs face each-other in the latest weekend of SSE Airtricity League First Division action. Markets Field is a familiar venue for the club however, with plenty of meetings with Limerick FC there over the years, most recently in 2019.
Cobh will be looking to put last week’s 4-0 home defeat to UCD behind, which came on the back of an impressive performance at Cork City.
Treaty come into the game in strong form, drawing 0-0 at Bray in their season opener before defeating Wexford 1-0 last time out. Making those results even more impressive is the fact they were reduced to ten men on both evenings. The latter of which sees Clyde O’Connell miss the Ramblers tie through suspension.
On the Ramblers squad news front, goalkeeper Corey Chambers is out with a hamstring injury, while the game is likely to come too soon for centre back Ben O’Riordan as he recovers from tonsillitis. Ciaran Griffin and Pierce Phillips suffered slight knocks during the week but should be fully fit for Friday night. Caelin Rooney remains suspended while Regix Madika is a long term absentee through injury.
There are a number of familiar faces in Tommy Barrett’s side. Defenders Charlie Fleming and Anthony O’Donnell both spent a number of seasons at Ramblers, while Adam Foley, captain Jack Lynch and Shane Lowth also featured in claret and blue in recent years.
Speaking to the assembled media before the game, Cobh manager Stuart Ashton is clearly eager to put last week’s defeat in the past and pick up a first win of the season,
“We’ve moved on from last week. The lads know that it wasn’t acceptable. We can play the blame game but as a collective we were second best on the day and we all know where we stand.
We’ve got to react to that and hopefully we can do the job away from home. We have to get back on track, hopefully with an away win at Treaty. They’re a good side and they’ve started brightly. We have to be wary and we’ll have to play to our best.
We’ve got to show the real Cobh Ramblers and then we’ve got a chance. There’s no easy games in this league, we have to be up for it and show that last week’s performance was a once off.”
Defender Darryl Walsh also spoke ahead of the tie and is looking forward to the Munster Derby,
“It’s another Derby for us and that adds to the game. There’s bragging rights there of course. But for us we need to blank that out and going to Limerick to get three points. That’s all that matters to us, regardless of who we play on the night.”
Kick-off on Friday night is at 19:45, with the game being streamed live here on LOI TV.