Cavan U21 manager impressed with Tyrone victory
Paul Fitzpatrick
Cavan U21 manager Peter Reilly has praised the strength in depth of his panel and reckons that several of those who cannot make the Cavan starting team at present would be starters in other counties.
The Knockbride clubman was very happy with his side’s performance against Tyrone next Wednesday but insisted that it is important to maintain the same level for the semi-final against Monagan next Wednesday in Brewster Park.
“It’s all about playing football and there are a lot of lads who are very comfortable on the ball,” said Reilly.
“They’re all good footballers and it’s about keeping that level of performance up and not letting it dip if possible, because if you let it dip, other teams are going to sneak up on you, and you have to try to avoid that.
“There’s an awful lot of boys on our panel who are not togging out who I’d suggest would get on a lot of county panels at the minute. There are lads who have come in and it’s seamless, and I hope it continues and I think it will.
“There are lads coming off the bench that are not weakening our team one little bit, in actual fact they’re strengthening it because lads that are coming off are tired, and they’re going in with fresh legs.”
Cavan got their tactics spot on and left Tyrone chasing shadows in the second half, when Cavan had the benefit of the wind advantage.
“You’ll always have something to improve on any quarter-final you win, but, that performance, we’re very happy with it. There were a few times in both halves when we could have scored more but, look, that’s it.
“It actually worked a lot better than we thought, we owned the ball for the first half – playing against a team with 12 men behind the ball, into a breeze, you could do nothing else. In real terms, we more or less played the clock down in the first half. We were delighted going in at half-time at three-all because there was a hell of a breeze out there.
“We knew if we played like that in the second half, that they weren’t going to cope, and that’s what happened. I know people in the stand would say ‘kick it in’ but all that would happen if you kicked it in would be that the ball would come back down the other side and they’d score points. You lose games doing that.”