Faulkner motivated for a crack at Tyrone

GAA

Ten days out from the Ulster Championship opener and Cavan are gearing up for what looks like a daunting trip to Omagh.

Tyrone are hot favourites but, says Cavan full-back Padraig Faulkner, the Blues are not going to Healy Park just to make up the numbers.

“There has to be a bit of a level of confidence,” said the Kingscourt man, speaking at AIB’s launch of the All-Ireland Championships yesterday (Tuesday).

“Yeah, we didn’t have a good league campaign but you have to look at what we achieved last year. Regardless, we take the title of Ulster champions into this year so every team will be looking to knock us off our perch, especially Tyrone.”

Cavan’s record against Tyrone at senior level has been poor; the Breffni men are without a championship win over their northern rivals in 38 years.

“I suppose it increases motivation. I haven’t beaten Tyrone in a [senior] championship game in my career and it’s a monkey on the back that Cavan have had ever since I can remember.

“All we can do is look at ourselves and then we can start looking at Tyrone and how we can break them down and how we can get over the line.”

Faulkner and many of his teammates have tasted victory over the Red Hands at underage level, however.

“You look at the lads who came up in my age group, Killian Clarke, Madden, Gerry Smith, Ciaran Brady, all those boys were in my age group and we would have been beating Tyrone at our age level so it is something that we do take on every year but we have fallen short in most of them.”

Much has been made of Tyrone’s new-found offensive approach. Asked what impact this might have on Cavan’s strategy, Faulkner said: “It leaves men more so to win their own individual battles now, if they are setting up more offensively. I know they have some massive names and McShane will more than likely be back into the swing of things come championship.

“They have a lot of names that are on form, McCurry, McKenna, a lot of these boys will just have to be marshalled and the threats will just have to be nullified going into it.”

After a disappointing league, the Ulster champions have had time to regroup.

“You just have to bounce back, our main focus was ourselves. There were no ifs or buts about other teams, our main focus was just to look at what we were doing wrong and what wasn’t working for us.

“We have had two weeks since and we have just been getting back on track. We have had two great weeks of training and that’s just what we can do.

“I do think there was an element of it being our own undoing. We gave away cheap ball and we weren’t finishing our scores and we were getting turned over. I don’t know whether it was the lack of football being played lately or what it was.

“There was no one thing going wrong, there was a bit of a multitude of things that just didn’t go our way. In previous years when you had time to blood some younger players in and trial out different thing, there wasn’t the scope for it this year.

“You only had three league games and that unfortunately decided your league campaign.”

Main pic: Cavan footballer Padraig Faulkner pictured on Tuesday at AIB’s launch of the 2021 GAA All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. Faulkner was in attendance at the launch alongside Paul Donaghy, Tyrone. Pic: Eóin Noonan/Sportsfile