Graham: 'It just wasn't good enough'

GAA

A dejected Mickey Graham did not try to dress up Cavan’s loss to Wicklow as anything other than what it was – a terribly disappointing performance and a worse result.

“Very disappointed, what other way would you be after a performance like that? It just wasn’t good enough and we just have to take it on the chin now and deal with it,” said Graham after the match.

“As I said, it’s very disappointing, we’d be very disappointed with the performance more than anything else, it just wasn’t good enough.”

Graham was at a loss to explain where this performance came from.

“We felt we trained well during the week and we were ready for this game but it didn’t look like it today to be honest with you. We seemed to just make a lot of bad decisions on the ball, gave the ball away cheaply and Wicklow duly punished us and fair play to them, they seemed to want it a wee bit more than we did.

“When you get into the situation that we found ourselves in today, you need to make sure that you have the appetite for the battle and it’s something that we need to question ourselves on today.”

As regards the players who were missing, he said: “Look, we can make all the excuses we want, we still had enough lads on the field to do the job we felt could be done today and we didn’t do it. I think we had enough possession; we had enough attacks, we owned the ball at certain stages and we just didn’t execute, it’s as simple as that.

“A lot of it is our own doing and fair play, we’re not taking anything away from Wicklow but we’d be very disappointed in the application, in the way we used the ball, the way we took the wrong options and we have a lot of work to do between now and the Tyrone game in four weeks’ time.

“It was a day for rolling up the sleeves and getting stuck in and Wicklow definitely were hungry for it today. That’s something that we would have always said about our lads, they always show that hunger an determination but it just wasn’t there today for some reason.

“There’s no point in feeling sorry for ourselves, we all have to take responsibility for that defeat today. We all have to try and lift ourselves and get ready for Tyrone in four weeks’ time, which is going to be a seriously tough challenge up in Omagh and I’m sure they will probably not be holding any fears of us after a performance like that.”

“They will probably be rubbing their hands and can’t wait for us now at this stage.”