Dundalk forward haunts Cobh yet again with spectacular match-winner

Dundalk FC forward Gbemi Arubi marked his return to the squad in stunning fashion, netting a sublime acrobatic strike to secure a 1-0 victory over Cobh Ramblers in the SSE Airtricity League First Division at Oriel Park.

Having missed the previous three matches due to a groin injury—games in which Dundalk failed to register a win—the 21-year-old former Shelbourne and Waterford attacker announced his comeback in style.

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Thirteen minutes into the match, Arubi produced a moment of brilliance worthy of goal-of-the-season acclaim, propelling The Lilywhites four points clear of Cobh at the summit of the table.

“Maybe in training, but never in a game,” he laughed when asked by The Democrat if he had ever scored a goal of such quality before. “I’m delighted with that one myself. We set out to win, and that’s what we’ve done, so we’re happy with the result.

“It was obviously a setback last week with the loss, but that’s just football at the end of the day. You win and lose games, but we’re just trying to take it game by game and win every game.

“The game plan today was to just come out; we know what we can do, and we showed that today. The lads dug in, and we got the goal early and saw it out to the end. It was a real man’s performance today.”

Echoing manager Ciaran Kilduff’s remarks that the first defeat of the season—suffered against Finn Harps the Monday before last—came as something of a relief for his players, Arubi reinforced that sentiment in his own post-match reflections, while also paying tribute to the supporters and the vibrant atmosphere they created.

“It’s out of the way now—the loss that everyone was looking at,” he said. “Now we’re just taking it game by game, getting three points on the board every week.

“The fans were unbelievable today,” he added. “Everyone was chanting from beginning to end. I’d just like to thank the fans. They helped us push through it, really. They were the 12th man on the pitch today.”

With Kilduff publicly stating his intention to add another attacking option during the July transfer window to complement Arubi, Dean Ebbe, and Eoin Kenny, the former remains unfazed by the prospect of increased competition for the centre-forward role.

“Competition, at the end of the day, it’s only going to push you to do better,” he said. “So that goal tonight, hopefully, just pushes me on even more to get more every week.”

Arubi’s match-winning strike against Cobh followed his earlier heroics in May, when he registered a goal and an assist in a 2-1 victory over the same second-placed side—contributions that could prove pivotal in the season’s final reckoning, as the battle for automatic promotion and the First Division title intensifies.

“It might be a thing with them—I just like scoring against them,” he smiled. “I’m obviously trying to score against every team. The only thing now is to stay fit and keep banging in the goals.

“You can see in this league that every game is hard. No games are going to come easy, so the lads are going to have to dig back in on Monday—training Monday, Tuesday, Thursday—ready for the game on Friday.”

Manager Kilduff then weighed in with words of praise for Arubi: “We haven’t had Gbemi since before the break, and he comes up with a wonder goal,” he said.

“Gbemi is a proper handful and can cause any defence problems when he’s like that, and he has in previous games. But we need to keep him in that shape, we need to keep him in that team, and we need to get him to be positive in all of his attributes, because I don’t think there’s many teams that can deal with him when he’s on that type of form.”