Cobh Ramblers manager Stephen Henderson was left frustrated by this team’s performance after slumping to a 1-0 defeat to Cabinteely at St. Colman’s Park on Saturday evening. In a game that lacked real quality, a first half strike from Robert Manley
Cobh Ramblers manager Stephen Henderson was left frustrated by this team’s performance after slumping to a 1-0 defeat to Cabinteely at St. Colman’s Park on Saturday evening. In a game that lacked real quality, a first half strike from Robert Manley was enough to seal all three points for the visitors. Fernandes and Kabia missed half chances for Ramblers but in truth both sides struggled to break each other down. Ramblers’ misery was compounded when Charlie Lyons was sent off in added time for an off the ball incident. The defeat leaves Ramblers languishing in 8th place with only six points amassed from seven games. For Cabinteely, they now occupy 4th spot and are only a single point behind leaders Longford Town. Manager Henderson felt his players never really got going on the night. “That was a scruffy game of football, a second ball type of game. I understand that because the pitch isn’t great. However, you can only use the pitch as an excuse so much. There were some passes tonight that were under hit and over hit, wrong choices made and that’s on us. I’m fed up of being disappointed. I can’t really defend us. We trained well, we organised them well and we gave them the green light to go and play. It didn’t happen.” “Second half we were better. We battled our way through that game without much quality. We had little flashes, but we didn’t deserve to win the match, maybe we didn’t deserve to lose it either, but we’ll get back on the training pitch and start again. “We underperformed tonight. I thought our centre backs did ok against two decent strikers, but we struggled in the final third. The crosses that went in were either under hit or over hit. Our decision making let us down. There was a good crowd here and they deserve better than that. It’s a tough patch we are going through.” Henderson feels his team are going to have to change their mentality if they are going to turn around their disappointing start to the campaign. “Even when we are playing well we don’t win sometimes. I really focused before the match on our mentality. In the First Division especially, there are all different types of games you come up against. You play against good footballing teams, good direct teams, teams that play long and short so there is always a different test for you. It is how you react is the question. There was a bit of panic from our players tonight and that is something I haven’t seen in a long time.” “The core of the problem is at training there is no consequences. We constantly demand success from our players. We don’t want to be a team in the First Division going through the motions. We want to bring success, challenge for the play offs, try and do well in the cups. Year on year we have done really well, being runners up, play-offs, cup finals but this year now is a test. It is a test of character for all of us. When players go out on the pitch, there is consequences to their actions and the consequence is conceding a goal that could lose you the match, so this is where we go to mentality. Have we got the mentality to take what we do in training onto the pitch? Some players have it, some don’t.” “The reality is in terms of budgets and all that we are probably where we should be, but we are not going to accept that. If we accept that, then we are done. Football is not about that, so I’m gutted with our return of points so far. You could look at our next game against Galway as a six-pointer even though there are only seven games gone. The league is very erratic at the moment, but we need to get that out of our heads and stop looking at the table. Instead of saying we could lose here and not be out of it, we must start thinking we could win here and be on top of this league. That’s the mentality that we need.”
