PROUD DAY FOR MOUNT

Lee is relishing 5th round draw and the possibility that his 1C side could face an Irish League giant

LEE CATHCART says he’ll be a proud man when he leads a Rosemount delegation to Windsor Park this Thursday to see who they get in the fifth round of the Tennent’s Irish Cup.

The 1C minnows from Greyabbey will be the lowest ranked team in the pot after their 3-1 win at home to Islandmagee on Saturday set up the prospect of potentially the biggest game in the club’s history.

With Linfield, Glentoran, Crusaders and all the rest of the Irish League big guns lying in wait, there’s every chance Rosemount could be handed a glamour draw.

That’s the dream scenario, of course, but Cathcart is not averse to drawing a Championship side either and with it an outside chance of progressing even further in the competition.

“Myself, the chairman, the secretary and two of our players will be going up to Windsor on Thursday and we’re looking forward to it” said the Rosemount chief.

“You get to this stage now and you want a big club, as big as you can get probably, and everyone would say they want the Blues away.

“But I’d be happy with a Championship team too. What we don’t want really is another Amateur League team or a team from the Ballymena league.

“But ideally, we want the biggest draw we can get.”

Scott Shannon netted twice at Islandview on Saturday with Dean Annett also on the scoresheet as the hosts emerged from a hard-fought tie.

“It was brilliant and for Rosemount, a wee 1C team, to be in the fifth round of the Irish Cup is unbelievable,” said Cathcart.

“And the players deserve it with the teams we have beaten – Annagh United, Newtowne and now Islandmagee.

“We knew we were going to be up against it yesterday, but I thought we controlled the game for the majority of it.

“We didn’t play brilliant, it was a bat- tle more than anything for both teams, but I thought we fully deserved it.”

The win, coupled with last week’s in the league at home to Shorts, has been the perfect response to Rosemount’s Border Cup heartbreak, when they took holders Crumlin Star to extratime at Seaview.

Sitting second from bottom in 1C – a position skewed by their extended run in the cups – a lot of hard work lies ahead if Rosemount are to get back in the race for promotion.

But Cathcart (right) has seen enough fight and enough quality recently to feel quietly confident about what they can achieve across the remainder of the campaign.

“The players have been brilliant,” he said. “We had a rough start to the season and at the very start, we were really, really struggling for a team through injuries, suspensions and holidays and it showed. But the Queen’s game [in the Steel Cup on August 25)] was probably a turning point for us.

“We got beat 2-0 but they scored two in the last few minutes against us, and we’d a bad result against Holywood, but apart from that, I think we’re unbeaten since that.

“And we’d a great win at Shorts last week because after the Crumlin Star game we were devastated.

“We had a great chance to win it at the end, but Star are a good team. They scored right at the end of the first half, and then right at the end of the first half of extra-time and the boys were just dead on their feet by the end of it.”