Seáni Maguire: Me and Keats feel guilt over Cork City relegation
Sean Maguire at Cork City Hall ahead of the Sports Direct FAI Cup Final. Pic: Morgan Treacy, Inpho
Back on the stage of his greatest moment, Seáni Maguire still can’t help but be wracked by guilt on Cork City’s big day.
It’s nine years since Maguire popped up with an extra-time winner at Lansdowne Road to deny Dundalk the double and clinch City’s first FAI Cup for nine years.
He’s 31 now on his return to the national stadium but reflects on that performance as one his worst over two spells with the Rebel Army.
What’s more, he can’t shake the sense of burden following a season that’s juxtaposed by relegation and being within 90 minutes of a trophy and European qualification.
Goals by Maguire at Finn Harps and at home at St Patrick’s Athletic in the semi were central to City’s march to their first final for eight years but it’s the games he missed that grate.
Not that he was culpable for the absence.
Ditto Ruairí Keating, his fellow striker re-signed midway through last season with a view to consolidating on their Premier Division comeback.
Both components of the strikeforce were sidelined early in the campaign with serious injuries.
“I think myself and Keats will feel a little bit of guilt,” admitted the Kilkenny man, who had spells in England with Preston North End, Coventry City and Carlisle United between his stints with City.
“Keats only played the bones of six games this season. I missed like 11 after tearing my hamstring three matches in.
“That was meant to be a 16-18 week layoff but I came back after 10. I probably should have given myself another couple of weeks after the break, but I wanted to get back.
“It took me a good few weeks, maybe a couple of months, to get back to the full fitness I feel now.
“But we're still feeling guilt because the club brought us back. All the pressure was on us to perform and then both of us were missing large parts of the season.
“I think a fully-fit Seáni Maguire is still the best striker in the country, even to this day.
“If I’d had Ruairi beside me upfront, we wouldn't have been relegated.”
By City extending their season, the prognosis on Keating’s Achilles rupture was revised. His cameo in last Saturday’s final league match against Derry City will ensure he’s involved at some stage in the decider against Shamrock Rovers.
“Keats has been back training seven weeks now and getting fitter by the week,” Maguire explained about his attacking partner whose woe compounded the tragic loss of his father Ciarán two years ago.
“Even if he was only back a couple of weeks training, I'd still fancy him when the ball comes into the box to put it away.
“He knows where the back of the net is and you can't teach that.
“I'd be thrilled for no other person in the world because Keats deserves it. I've seen what he's been through the last seven months and the last couple of years.
“He deserves something like this. Maybe it’s written in the stars for him to come on and score the winner.”
There'd be an element of coming full circle too, were Maguire to be influential to the showdown.
His 2016 winner wasn’t enough to secure his return to England – that was to follow midway through the 2017 double-winning season – but there’s regrets to scotch.
“I genuinely thought I'd definitely get over 50 Ireland caps,” he recalls.
“I was that mentally driven and had that much belief in the way I was playing when signing for Preston.
“I ended up getting 11 caps, which I put down to bad luck with injuries.
“Once I got back on my feet, I’d get injured again, so it became a mental battle.
“I started seeing a few people to change my mental side of the game. Would I change any of what happened? No, I won't.”
There’s more to football and he’s perfected his work/life balance by settling back on Leeside with his wife Claudia Rose and their one-year-old son Romeo.
“I owe a lot to Cork City and John Caulfield for taking a chance on me,” he said of his 2016 move from Dundalk.
“I was just about to go amateur with Wexford Youths, so the Cork offer was the turning point. I met my wife within two months and made lifelong friends. Teammate Steven Beattie was our wedding groomsman.
“I didn't come back to Cork to be at the bottom end of the table. All the presumption outside is Shamrock Rovers winning the double so 90% have written us off.
“That’s fine but we not just beat St Pat’s 3-0 in the semi but battered them.
“I know we’re capable of winning. Lifting that Cup would bring a bit of pride to our season, something for the fans to enjoy on Sunday after a hard season."
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