LETTERKENNY Rovers defender Keith Cowan was pleased to get back on the pitch on Tuesday night as the side began their defence of the Brian McCormick Sports Cup.

The Letterkenny men produced a ruthless display to defeat Kerrykeel ‘71 7-1 in their opening round encounter at Leckview Park on Tuesday.

The former Finn Harps defender stated that it was nice to get back into a competitive environment and to secure the win.

“You never know what you’re going to get with these games. It was called off on Sunday and I think they were down a few bodies tonight as were we.”

“It’s just good to get back on the pitch again in a competitive environment and it was nice to get the win.”

Stephen McConnell’s outfit began the contest brightly, taking the lead on four minutes through Lee McMonagle before the visitors levelled proceedings ten minutes later.

This appeared to have provided a wake-up call for the Leckview Park residents as they really pushed on from here to lead by four goals at the interval.

Cowan expressed that it was sloppy defensively to let Kerrykeel ‘71 in for that equalising goal and thinks they may have been unlucky not to have bagged another one or two throughout the match.

“It was a bit sloppy from ourselves. I think there were a few of us that thought it might be too easy with the way we started the game and that’s never the case.”

We’ve played long enough now to know that if you give teams an opportunity to punish you then they will and we did that. They got the break and scored and maybe were unlucky not to get another one or two on top of that.”

Tuesday night’s victory was the perfect start to Letterkenny Rovers’ Brian McCormick Cup defence having won the honour last season courtesy of an extra-time victory over Castlefin Celtic back in May to seal the treble.

The Letterkenny Rovers centre-half discussed that the club will be doing everything they can to replicate that this year as they aim to defend all their silverware.

“A club like Letterkenny Rovers wants to win every cup competition that it enters and the Brian McCormick Cup is no different.”

“Last year we had a great season, we won everything, we were undefeated in the league and I suppose that’s given other teams a boost to try and catch us like I’m sure they will. We set the bar high and they’ve got to try to join us now