BY GER McCARTHY
CARBERY Rangers’ relegation from the McCarthy Insurance Group Division 1 county football league occurred on the same weekend two walkovers were handed out in the division.
On Friday, Newcestown relinquished a potential Division 1 league final appearance by conceding to Cill na Martra. Then on Sunday, Castlehaven conceded their game to an Éire Óg team in a relegation battle, and the award of two points helped the Ovens club in their bid to avoid the drop.
As for Carbery Rangers, they needed to beat Carrigaline in their final Division 1 outing to have any chance of staying up.
Down 4-8 to 0-8 early in the second half, Rangers staged a gutsy comeback to make it 4-13 to 4-13. Unable to find a winning score, time ran out and a draw wasn’t enough to preserve the West Cork club’s Division 1 status. They finished on six points, the same as Douglas, but the city side’s better head to head record saw them avoid the drop to Division 2 – Douglas beat Ross in the league in March,
As disappointing an outcome as that was, Carbery Rangers manager Seamus Hayes believes the county league’s integrity was affected by those walkovers.
‘I think the value of the county league has been undermined by those concessions,’ Hayes told The Southern Star.
‘I understand why Castlehaven and Éire Óg might not have been able to play on the Sunday for a variety of different reasons.
‘Definitely, the county board has to look at enforcing teams to play their league games. I don’t believe a fine is enough of a sanction for not playing a game. It doesn’t appear to be.’
To be fair to the Carbery Rangers manager, he was quick to point out his club’s destiny remained in their own hands.
‘It was in our own control,’ Hayes added.
‘If we won last Sunday’s game against Carrigaline, we would have been safe.
‘At the same time, the other game being conceded, it put a little bit of a dampener on the weekend. I was talking to the Carrigaline manager on the side-line and we were asking ourselves what are we doing here if others aren’t going to fulfill their fixtures?
‘There were times throughout this year when we were struggling to get numbers together because of different things going on. We still fulfilled all our fixtures.
‘Going forward, it is important for the integrity of the competition that the county board steps in when teams can’t play. Maybe give them another three or four days to get their game(s) played. If teams still can’t agree then I believe there should be some sort of points deduction for both.’
Concessions aside, Carbery Rangers will play Division 2 football in 2025. The most frustrating aspect of that reality is the lack of consistency that hurt Hayes’ team and eventually led to their demotion.
‘We have to look at ourselves,’ the Carbery Rangers manager admitted.
‘It was in our own control, the Carrigaline game. We were well behind before a storming comeback. It wasn’t enough.
‘I said it to the players afterwards, the way we played in the last 15 minutes, that is how we should be performing all the time.
‘There has been a lot of learning in this year’s league for the panel. Consistency is a big thing. Even in those games where we played well, we played well for one half and not so well after that. It is a case of being able to put the whole thing together and a full 60-minute performance for us. That is what we will be looking for, going forward.
‘We showed signs of developing a little bit more attacking potency during the league. The comeback against Carrigaline has set the tone of what we expect from our players over the next five weeks in the build-up to our (Cork Premier SFC) St Michael’s game.’
Carbery Rangers are in Group 2 of the Cork Premier SFC alongside Castlehaven, Clonakilty and St Michael’s.
