‘We’ve dealt with pressure situations before’ - Graham

GAA news

Four days out from a potentially season-defining clash with Tyrone and Cavan are greatly looking forward to the challenge, according to manager Mickey Graham.

The rumoured injury crisis has not materialised, he said, with almost a full hand to play with.

“The injury situation at the moment looks good,” Graham told the Anglo-Celt on Tuesday.

“It looks like James Smith will be a race against time alright but apart from that, it looks like we have a full clean bill of health, apart from Ciaran Brady obviously.

“There were a few lads who, during the league campaign, it wasn’t worth taking a chance with the fear of losing them altogether. We gave them the time to get the rehab done and get the work done and hopefully we’ll see the benefits of that now.

“We’re training Thursday and hopefully after that we’ll have an idea of our team, we’ll probably name the team after that session.”

After the low that was the loss to Wicklow in the relegation play-off, the Cavan’s squad’s response has been exemplary, he said.

“I have to say the response after that game has been tremendous from the lads. We were obviously disappointed with the result but moreso disappointed with the performance because we didn’t perform whatsoever, I think that’s the most frustrating part of it.

“I think when we look back on the league campaign as a whole, we could have got something out of every single game but we didn’t. We are doing a lot of things right but our execution at the business end of the field [wasn’t good enough], we weren’t just putting scores away and we felt that we were hitting a lot of our markers but we weren’t executing what we needed to execute.

“In fairness the lads have responded well from that defeat, they have knuckled down and put their heads down and worked their socks off after that defeat so hopefully now they’ll put in a big performance at the weekend.”

Tyrone go into the game as heavy favourites (1/6) with the bookmakers to win the match, despite leaking six goals in their most recent match against Kerry.

“It’s very hard to read into the Kerry game to be honest, it was one of those freak games where everything that could go wrong did go wrong for them so I’m sure that they will take a lot of learnings from that and they’ll probably look to fix the few areas that let them down.

“You know what to expect from Tyrone, counter-attacking team, turnover ball… Will they revert back to type and get lots of bodies behind the ball? I don’t know. Only time will tell.

“It will be interesting to see because I know that they have been trying to play a more expansive type of football and in fairness it was looking good for them up to the Kerry game. I don’t know if they’re going to revert back to their old ways and only Saturday evening will tell us that.”

Cavan have been completely written off in the media and elsewhere which Graham admits is a little frustrating given his side have competed in the last two Ulster finals, winning last year.

Frustration

“It does frustrate you but I suppose people are looking at the form during the week and going on that. They’re probably saying, ‘sure look, Cavan haven’t a chance now’ but we have seen in the last two years, we have been very competitive in the Ulster Championship, our form in the Ulster Championship has been quite good.

“We feel that the better teams we play against, the better the performance we get out of ourselves. We’ll be hoping that will be the case and we’ll need that on Saturday evening if you’re going to have any chance of upsetting the odds.

“But look, we have been in this situation before, we just have to deal with it and get on with it.

“The players have been in these situations before and they’ve dealt with them so I suppose the pressure is a wee bit on Tyrone in the sense that it’s a home game for them, they’re talked about along with Donegal as the two top dogs in Ulster.

“There’s a lot of pressure on them to perform, especially after the league campaign no more than ourselves, so both teams will be going in looking for a big performance to forget about their last poor league outing.”

Picking the starting team and the match-day 26 will be a difficult task, he admitted.

“It is, there’s going to be a wee bit of competition to be honest. A lot of lads have put their hands up in the last few weeks and because of that, it really raised the standards within training as well so it’s great to have that headache too.

“It means that lads who don’t make the starting 15, we know they can come off the bench and make a difference and that is key when you get to the championship, as we saw last year in games as well.

“Hopefully we get the right formula on the day.”