Letterkenny Rovers successfully defended their league title on Sunday afternoon at Central Park, but it didn’t all go according to their script, and Keith Cowan noted that it was going to be almost impossible to replicate what they achieved last year.
“Last season, it felt like everything fell into place nicely,” he started.
“We were winning games comfortably, a lot of what we did came off, but this season hasn’t been like that.
“We had a tricky start, we had to look at ourselves, maybe a few fingers pointed, difficult conversations, sometimes that’s what you have to do and everyone accepted the challenge.
“This was great to win once, but to defend it is something else. Over the course of the season, the best team wins the league, and that’s us.
“Winning it in this way wasn’t good for our nerves, but hopefully everyone else enjoyed it.”
Keadue Rovers had a mission of their own to complete and were on course to achieve that as each minute ticked by, but only two late headers thwarted them. Cowan was full of praise for his counterparts, and praised the impact of the bench and not just today.
“Full credit to Keadue today, they’re fighting for their lives,” he said.
“Their goal was a bit of a sucker-punch for us, and you could say the result was a robbery, that a draw would have been fair, but we’ll take it.
“We’ve had a few games like that this season, and it required some late winners.
“In those moments, you look at the bench and the quality that we can bring off it. It has been our bench that has won us the game a lot of times.
“Today did feel like it wasn’t going our way. Dean(McCarry) hit one all the way across the face of the goal, a few more like that happened, and it felt like we’d just have to go again next week.
“We all stuck to the task, and it wasn’t done and dusted with the second goal because they were pushing, and it was just a huge relief to get over the line.”
Later in the year, Letterkenny Rovers will be in the newly formed third tier in the League of Ireland. It’s been set-up for a half campaign in 2026, but with some important games left to play, that topic of conversation has been put on hold.
“We actually haven’t had any major discussions about it, only casually to be honest,” he stated.
“We have no doubt that it’ll be a big step up, but we haven’t sat down to properly chat yet, we’ve been fully focused on getting this done and no doubt, it’ll switch to Donegal Town now.
“We’ve taken it one game at a time, and now that the league is done, we can refocus and look to the Brian McCormick Cup.”