Ramor hope to strike gold in silver year

Regardless of the outcome of Sunday's semi-final against Kingscourt, Ramor United manager Kevin McDonnell will be on the pitch at Breffni Park on October 3 anyway. A half-back on the SFC-winning squad of 1985, he will be a member of the Ramor team set to be honoured before the match. If he has his way, however, he'll be doing more than just stepping forward and waving when the big days comes around. McDonnell, who captained the last Ramor side to bring home the Oliver Plunkett Cup in 1992, has overseen a radical transformation in his side this season already and hopes are high in Virginia that they are not done improving just yet. "I think things are going alright, we were lucky enough to beat Lacken the last day but after losing our first eight league matches, I think we've lost one in the last 10 or 11 matches, so it has improved, yeah," McDonnell told The Anglo-Celt this week. "We had an awful lot of players out at the start of the year but they're all coming back now and hopefully we'll give a good enough performance against Kingscourt." The win over Lacken and the eye-catching second half display was a real statement of intent from McDonnell's side. "We held their big players well in the second half. There was no doubt about it, we had luck in the first half but we always felt we would have a bit of luck because I suppose at the start of the year we had county minors and we weren't playing them when other clubs were. So we felt we would get a bit of luck someplace and thankfully we did. "We came through it, we felt we were unlucky against Ballinagh and could have beaten them, and then we had a good draw against Cavan Gaels and Lavey was close enough actually but in the end we got through. It's just great to be back in a semi-final with Ramor, it's only our second semi-final since we won it in '92." The return of one key player, and the re-positioning of another, has had a huge impact on United's season. "We got Keith Soden back this year, who hasn't played football in a few years for Ramor, he's living in Athlone now and he has made an absolute huge difference to us because we've lost Paddy McNamee to Australia and we had a few bad injuries," said McDonnell. "Aodhgán Cahill was in goals last year for us and we're playing him in the forwards and he's made a big difference as well. I think we have genuinely got nine or ten very good forwards, at the start of the year we had three and there are a lot of good young lads on the team as well." Ramor have been building diligently from the bottom up in recent years and that underage policy - highlighted by an outstanding Under 14 title achieved just last Sunday - has been instrumental in changing the fortunes of the Ramor squad at senior level. "You'd be hoping anyway that there will be a couple of players coming through every year. We're always in Roinn A which is a big help and there's always good enough teams coming through," said McDonnell. Having won it as a player and led Denn to their first final in 2008, McDonnell knows what it takes to reach the SFC decider. However, he refused to look past Kingscourt and cited the Stars' impeccable league form as proof of the challenge awaiting his side. "I think it's definitely a 50-50 match but if you do look at the league table, they have only lost the one game to the Gaels and apart from that - I know they had a blip against Cuchulainns - they have come back very strong. "They will be hard beaten but we won't be afraid of them and we should be able to put it up to them."