Published: Wednesday, 17th June, 2009 11:23am

Cavan panellists suffer injury blows

Cavan"s plans for the Ulster semi-final against Antrim on June 27 have been hit by a handful of untimely injuries to some panel members.

Promising midfielder Gearoid McKiernan of Swanlinbar suffered a serious leg injury during his club"s JFC win over Cavan Gaels, while Barry Watters also left the field injured in Drung"s defeat to Bailieborough.

'I"m very disappointed to lose Gearoid McKiernan,' stated Cavan manager Tom Carr.

'He"s actually a player that was borderline to be on the team at some stage, or getting a run. He was certainly a player that we wanted to blood this year in championship football. I think he has huge potential, and is a guy that I have a lot of time for. But it"s not a nice injury. He"s going to require time and won"t be playing this side of October or November.'

Barry Watters" injury is not as serious as first feared but will rule the versatile 19-year-old out for over a month, Carr said.

'Barry Watters has knee and ankle injury all in the one go and he"ll be gone for four or five weeks as well. Micheal Lyng is not making as much progress as we would like either so we"re getting the old injury bug now. We were quite good before the Fermanagh game but we"re getting a taste of the injury list now.

'Paul Brady is bringing home an injury with him, he sustained a hamstring injury but he"ll be home on Wednesday and we"ll assess it then.'

Asked if he would be drafting new players into the panel, Carr stated that his first priority is to maintain the intensity of squad training.

'What we won"t be doing is bringing fellas in for the sake of it, we"ll be bringing fellas in who we think have something to offer, this year or certainly next year.' he said.

'But we won"t just make up numbers, we"d prefer to keep the standard and intensity high.'

The manager admitted that he surprised to discover that Cavan would face the Saffrons.

'I haven"t seen the game yet, we were actually training ourselves at the time,' he said.

'I was surprised. I wouldn"t have been surprised if it was a neutral venue but the fact that it was in Ballybofey and any team going up there has always found it difficult... To be quite honest I didn"t give them a chance and if it was us going to Ballybofey I think we would have found it very difficult to beat Donegal.'

Antrim"s shock win over John Joe Doherty"s side, who kicked 17 wides, has lead to Cavan being installed as favourites to reach their first Ulsetr final since 2001. However, Carr, as expected, was quick to preach caution.

'I think you"ll have two teams coming in with the very same frame of mind, one of them not necessarily fearing the other. I don"t think we"ll fear Antrim, I don"t think Antrim will fear us. We"ve played them a number of times over the last few years, I think we beat them by a point or two up in Casement Park in the McKenna Cup and they came down and beat us in Lacken about four or five weeks ago.'