New year, new challenges for Faulkner

GAA news

Even in the boom-bust cycle of Cavan football, nothing comes close to what we have witnessed over the past couple of months.

It’s only seven months ago that many Cavan followers were hugely optimistic about beating Dublin and winning an All-Ireland; true to form, the ribbons had barely been removed from the Anglo-Celt cup when suddenly the team had been relegated to Division 4 of the National League for the first time and some of the same punters were declaring it a new low.

The truth, like most of these things, is probably somewhere in between. What is most interesting, or concerning, depending on how you look at it, is just how Cavan lost their form so badly in the shortened, four-game league.

For full-back Padraig Faulkner, there is no one-size-fits-all answer.

“One of the big things that sticks out for me is that [in the first lockdown] there was club football on,” All-Star full-back Faulkner told the Anglo-Celt last week.

“Last year, everybody was really, really developing their ball skills. It was probably one of the most competitive years of football in Cavan and I think it was a massive foundation block for lads coming in, they had all their pre-season done for county you could sort of say when all the club football was played.

“Even lads that were out early were looking in on the club games happening and they were training hard themselves. Whereas this year it was a complete lockdown, train by yourself or in groups of one or two, it just wasn’t the same I don’t think.

“I myself would find it very, very hard to train alone, I enjoy the social aspect of it and the fun and the craic at training. I personally need an extra man beside me driving me on, if I was running myself I don’t think I’d be pushing myself as hard.”

Injuries have been a factor of late and the county, as always on the eve of championship, is humming with rumours of more being picked up. The true status of those, we won’t know till Saturday evening but Faulkner does not believe that the county panellists are picking up any more knocks than club players generally are.

“If you put a GPS on yourself in a club match or a county game, you are going to run a lot more in the county game than you are in the club game. The tempo is faster, the pace of the game, the hits can be harder – it’s a different story.

But there are as many boys getting injured at club level as at county level. It’s a tough one to put the finger on, maybe there wasn’t the same work being done. I don’t know, maybe there are more social aspects this time round for club players.

“But it’s the same all round, there are lads getting injured at both levels.”

Cavan were missing up to half a dozen or more starters at times in the league but got on with it, the management using the opportunity to blood some youngsters. While they did well, says Faulkner, that was always going to cause a little disruption to the flow of things.

“You’re playing fellas who might be making their league debuts and so on so it does cause a wee bit of restructuring in the team. I do think the lads that are coming in are every bit as good as the lads who have been injured.

“It’s very hard for a younger fella to come in and be an absolute leader. You look at the likes of Ciaran Brady who is missing now, he just would be a massive leader for us. Unfortunately he can’t be with us this year now, he’s in doing his rehab but he won’t be a part of the championship campaign.

“[The new players have] settled in lovely. And then you have lads who only got a taste for it last year, the likes of Oisin Brady, Caoimhan McGovern, all these lads. They’re really settling in.

“Like that, there’s not the full league campaign that you can possibly trial different things in different games, you only had four games in total so there wasn’t that platform for these boys coming in. There was no McKenna Cup, there was minimal challenge games, it was straight into league.

“As you saw, we lost two out of our three league games and then lost to Wicklow and that was our whole league season. Four league games is just probably not enough to define a whole season on.

“If you take last year into account, when it was game on game each week, you brought your form every week and there was no let up.”

Get over Tyrone and they can get, hopefully, into a rhythm again but there is no safety net. Once more, it’s win or bust for Cavan on Saturday. That much never changes.