Cobh Ramblers

History

Cobh Ramblers FC came into being in 1922. Success was hard to come by at first, as the best acre of land they could find for a pitch involved a 1:10 slope. For reasons now lost in the mists of time, the majority of people in the area chose to support the various incarnations of Cork City (now Mark II) not win anything before going bust, reforming, not winning anything… As a result, Cobh pottered around the Munster Senior League for several seasons, occasionally pushing Cork close in the Munster Senior Cup. In 1944, they scored a notable win in the tournament by beating Coastal Defence in the final. Coastal Defence had requested the game be postponed a month as they had received news of a planned invasion by the German army, but Ramblers bravely declined. Later that week, a legion of German infantry landed on a beach in Cork, only to see it surrounded by four stands. A ball suddenly landed from such a height that two soldiers were paralysed, while another three required hospital treatment after being hit with a bottle from the stands; the remainder fled for their lives.

Cobh were to win the Munster Senior Cup again the next season, much to the embarrassment of their bigger neighbours in Cork. Cork threatened to forfeit their League Cup tie until Cobh gave Cork their rightful title; Cobh, alarmed at the thought of losing out on half their season’s gate receipts, agreed a compromise whereby history would record the winners as “Cork United B”. However, they had learnt their place, and 60 years later, very little has changed.

Absolutely nothing happened in Cobh until 1983, when they fluked their way to the Semi-Finals of the FAI Cup. Those days, anyone could get that far once in a while – the Second Round was also the Quarter-Final – and beating Finn Harps in a knock-out competition (as they did in the Quarters) is akin to preparing Shamrock Rovers’ accounts for a new season (it was easy, see, we just did what we did last time...). 6,600 crammed into St Colman’s Park that day, including 100 escapees from nearby Spike Island prison who thought the ground would be a perfect place to lie low for a few years, and 6,000 Cork fans who had nothing else to do as they’d long since been knocked out. Cobh drew Sligo in the semis, and eventually lost out after three replays. Sligo went on to win the Cup, but just how crap they were was proven the next year when they lost 5-0 in the First Round to UCD.

As luck would have it, the FAI decided to expand the league by six teams just two years later. Setting a precedent (St Francis, anyone?!), Cobh were elected to the league in a knee-jerk reaction to a non-league team having one successful season in the midst of 50 years of mediocrity. Their first two seasons in the First Division saw them finish sixth before being promoted in 1987/8, only to come straight back down again the next season. They came up again in 1992/2 and would have come straight back down again only that they had the good fortune to draw Finn Harps in a promotion/relegation play-off; Cobh won 3-1 on penalties. Back then, though, the league was a strange place, and that season saw Monaghan score more points than all but three teams (even more bizarrely, they were Shamrock Rovers, Cork City and Galway United) and still only finish seventh. Proper order was being restored, however, and Cobh and Monaghan went down the next season.

Around the same time, of course, Cobh had a very famous player on their books. Yes, Nicky Byrne played 11 league games in goals for the club in 1997/8, replacing Noel Mooney, who had been promoted to the seniors…I mean…sold to Cork City. Byrne had signed from Leeds United, and his career was to continue downhill as he signed for St Francis before joining Westlife. Oh, and Roy Keane also played for them for a while before Brian Clough showed up waving a cheque for £10,000; he was overheard laughing about it in the pub for years after.

In 2002, Cobh appointed Dave Hill as player-manager and reached the play-offs after a season which saw a record 3,729 fouls committed. 2,175 of these were leg-breakers and, coincidentally, 2,175 were missed by the incompetent referees at that level. The last two seasons have seen Cobh finish eighth, with the only thing of note they’ve done being to somehow thieve four points off us in our brief sojourn in those parts in 2004, although we did seal promotion in winning our third encounter.