Carrick calling as Cavan seek positive start

GAA news

In the hierarchy of derby matches for Cavan, Leitrim is probably well down the list, not because it’s not fiercely felt along the county boundary but because the sides have met on so few occasions down through the years.

Remarkably, Cavan have played every county in Ireland, bar Kilkenny, since 2011 and all bar Waterford since 2014 yet have not met Leitrim since losing 0-13 to 1-7 in the National League in October 1995 in Carrick On Shannon.

In fact, Cavan have played every other county, including New York whom they met twice in the Mick Higgins Cup in 2015, twice and have taken on most of them three times since the last tussle with their Connacht neighbours.

Current manager Mickey Graham was on the panel for that 1995 match, in which Ronan Carolan (1-6) and Damien O’Reilly were Cavan’s only scorers.

“In fairness to them, they’ve been competing very well the last number of years. They got promoted from Division 4. They are always a tough team to play against, especially in Carrick On Shannon. Even in my own days playing, it was a tough place to go to get a result,” Graham told the Anglo-Celt on Tuesday.

“They will have a spring in their step with new management now under Andy Moran and with a home crowd getting behind them and the fact that it’s a local derby against their neighbours Cavan, I’m sure they’re rubbing their hands looking forward to us going down there.

“We have to make sure we’re in the right frame of mind going there because we are under no illusions as to how tough they are going to make life for us and we have to be able to match that work ethic and that spirit that they have.”

Graham has a strong hand to play with this Sunday after two McKenna Cup games which indicated the squad are in good fettle.

“I think we have a full clean bill of health for Sunday, obviously Ciaran Brady, Oisin Pierson and Cian Reilly are long term injuries at the moment and Conor Brady as well but apart form those lads, everybody that participated in the McKenna Cup hopefully will be available for selection now this week.

“We have to put the Tyrone game into context, where they were coming from. Obviously they were only coming back from a sun holiday and only had a handful of players who played in the All-Ireland final but we weren’t really focused on them, it was what we wanted to get out of the game ourselves.

“We tried to use those games to work on stuff that we had been doing at training and we’d have been happy that we got certain aspects of that in those two games against Armagh and Tyrone. There were some things that we tried to improve on and we did see an improvement in those areas and hopefully that will have brought us on another bit now heading into the league game this weekend.”

The shortened season has seen teams lining out stronger sides than usual in the pre-season competitions and Cavan are no different.

“Usually you weren’t out in the championship till the end of May, that’s nearly six months and it’s a long time to try and keep boys on the top of their game and try and get the balance right. If you peak for the end of January, early February, it’s very hard to keep that level up right up to championship in May or June and then keep that consistency of performance in the championship.

“But with the split season now, it’s definitely more condensed and you don’t have to worry about six months down the line because obviously we are out on April 23 which is only 12 weeks away so it’s going to come around very quickly, especially with the league games week after week. So yeah, you have to try and get your best players out on the field as early as possible.

“With the short season now as I said, you have to try and get players as many games as possible. We’ll be approaching the league now with the mindset that we need big performances in every game. We have seven league games and three weeks after that we are into an Ulster Championship so it’s going to come in very quickly and the more games we can get and the more consistency we can get in our performances, hopefully that will lead into championship.

“We have five or six players still to come back, they’ll be arriving back midway through the National League and hopefully we can get games into them and get them up to speed as quickly as possible. We’ll be taking the league seriously this year.”

Cavan were due to train last night and the team will be named this Friday. Throw-in is 2pm on Sunday.