Roy to the rescue

IT WAS one of those moments in football which people cherish. Last Saturday in the Belfield Bowl, with his team one down and the match already deep into time added on, UCD goalkeeper Matt Gregg swapped his own goal for the opposing penalty box and, rose highest above friend and foe alike to head home a Derek Doyle free and rescue an unlikely point.

Roy to the rescue

Cue general bemusement, amusement and one of the quotes of the season, as Gregg explained his own response to seeing the ball hit the back of the net: “I didn’t know what to do, it’s not as if I practice my celebrations.”

There were some folk, however, who could have done without being party to one of football’s quirkier twists of fate. “I was up there looking at it and I didn’t see any funny side of it,” says Barry Walsh. “No, it wasn’t one bit funny.”

Barry is the chairman of Cobh Ramblers, the club who were on the receiving end of Gregg’s sensational late intervention. And, given their current circumstances, it’s not hard to understand why the men from the south were not amused.

For just before the opposition ‘keeper popped up in their box four minutes into stoppage time, Cobh were on the brink of only their third league victory of the season, a win which would have lifted them off the bottom of the Premier Division table. Instead, they learned that even goalies will kick you when you’re down.

Down – but not out. Despite their many struggles on and off the park this season, Walsh remains confident that his club can retain the elite status they won by lifting the First Division title last season.

“We’ve strengthened the team – we’ve brought in four new players – and I’m expecting them to do the job,” says the chairman. “It should have started last week against UCD, we should have won it, but I’d be expecting them to take the three points against Bray (at St Colman’s Park tonight, kick off 7.45pm).

“All it’s about now is getting out of the relegation zone – fourth from bottom is all I want now.

“It’s vital we stay in the Premier League,” he continues.

“It’s vital that we stay in it and we’ll do everything in our power to stay in it, so that we can consolidate and build from there. If we were to be relegated, it would set us back five years.”

Nine months on from the night when the club’s players, officials and travelling supporters were celebrating promotion after a victory in Athlone, Cobh have learned that life in the faster lane can be hard going.

“The biggest problem – apart from going into a different league – is that the attendances at the gate didn’t increase by the amount that we thought it would,” says Walsh.

“I don’t honestly know why that is. The biggest crowd we’ve had was a full house for the derby against Cork City – around the 4,000 mark. The average attendance would be 900 to a 1,000 but we had been hoping that we’d get an average of 2,000. That would sustain us, we’d be comfortable with that.”

In common with a number of other clubs in the league, Cobh have found themselves squeezed financially.

“We did have a cash-flow problem,” Walsh admits, “but like all other companies, we took steps to rectify that. The players are all paid up to date. The overall outlook for the season is that we don’t have a problem financially.”

But that, to a large extent, is thanks to the club’s most famous old boy, Roy Keane, whose Sunderland side take on Cobh at Turner’s Cross on Monday (kick-off 7.30m) in a friendly game which will provide a much needed cash-boost for the Ramblers.

“That’s the reason they’re coming over – for the financial side of it,” Walsh concedes. “In fairness to Roy, he’s done it before with United. And he’s come up trumps again this time.

‘‘What does it mean to us? It means surviving, that’s what it means. We would have been struggling big-time without it.”

Walsh cites the saturation coverage of British football on television as the single biggest obstacle to attracting fans to the domestic game — “Sky have the place swamped,” is how he puts it — but he is unconvinced that proposals to unify the club game on the island offer a realistic solution.

“I don’t think the All Ireland league is the way forward,” he muses. “I think the way forward is with the FAI. Remember this is only the second year since they took over (the league). Yes, I think the weaker clubs will probably fall off or be burned off at the end of the line and you’ll have 10 or 12 or maybe 14 strong clubs that will survive. And I would like us to be one of those.”

A difficult season on the pitch for Cobh has been matched by turbulence in the boardroom, culminating earlier this month in a motion to have the club withdraw from the League of Ireland and return to the Munster Senior League.

However, Walsh – who joined Cobh Ramblers as Commercial Manger in 1994 and became Chairman in 2005 – survived a vote of no confidence, following which four committee members resigned. “It was a brilliant win,” he told this newspaper at the time. “We had a resounding victory and now all that old rubbish is done with and we have a mandate to go forward and develop the club.”

But as he reflects on the rocky road which Cobh have travelled since that night of celebration, does Barry Walsh ever reflect that the price of success might simply be too high?

“No,” he says emphatically, “because there’s no other way to go. Without a doubt you have to be in the Premier. Simple as that. There’s no price too high for that. We’re a small town in the south of Ireland and we have a Premier Division side. It deserves to be supported.”

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