'They are a hungry group, they are learning' - Dunne

JFC final preview

It hasn’t all been plain sailing for Martin Dunne’s Drumlane this year but they are where they want to be now, in a championship final and chomping at the bit to get going.

Former Cavan Gaels and county attacker Dunne has lots of experience of successful championship runs and he knows they are a marathon, not a sprint.

“Every team gets a wobble during the year but when you look at the age profile of this team, they’re very young and it’s hard for a group of young lads to be consistent, week in and week out,” Dunne said.

“I suppose in the first few league games we were lucky enough that we had the same team and there were no changes, then we started picking up knocks and the team changed and that patch where we had three games we were missing a lot of lads in fairness.

“The lads reacted well to it, there is good character within the group and it was pleasing that even though things weren’t going well, they still had the capabilities to turn it round and get the wheels back on the road.”

The young talent in the squad was one of the factors which attracted Dunne.

“When I looked at the job I would have thought it was an older team than what it was. But they won the Division 2 U20s on their own last year so that’s obviously a good core group of lads there pushing it on.

“Outside of three or four lads who are the wrong side of 30, the rest of the group are probably 25 or younger. We don’t really have too many players in that 25-30 category. They are a real hungry group, they are learning and this is going to be a massive learning curve for them in the final.

“I’m looking forward to seeing how they cope with the pressure. Anything that has been thrown at them so far, they have answered. We are going in as underdogs to this game which will be a change from the last day so I suppose we can just let fly and see where it takes us.

“The way I looked at it was they had a couple of key players there so you said, right, there’s a good base straight away. They’re after coming down from intermediate down to junior so you’re probably looking at it saying they should have a chance of getting promoted.

“Taking all these things into account and doing a bit of homework on them and seeing the quality of player they had there, it was a very easy decision to take the job. It was a very attractive job so it was hard to turn down.”

Having carved out a playing career as a forward, did the presence of some quality attackers draw him towards the role?

“It's definitely important. Nowadays teams set up very defensively and it’s easy to get that defensive structure in but if you can’t kick the ball over the bar, you’re going to be in trouble so the quality of forward that is in Drumlane was one of the things that attracted me to the job, definitely.”

At the other end of the field, they have coped well with the loss of integral defender Donal Monahan since the group.

“In fairness, we are going to probably be thin on the ground this weekend but we do have a squad, we’re not relying on certain lads, if we pick up injuries in our defence, we have lads who are capable of coming in and stepping up and doing a job.

“Obviously Donal is a big player for us and it is massive not to have him for practically the whole championship when we needed him but other lads have stepped up and taken their chance and that’s what it’s all about.”

Along with youth, there is a core of veterans leading the way.

“Dane and John (O’Dowd) bring great experience as does Ciaran Crowe. You need a bit of the old dog for the hard road and those boys are giving us that and still have plenty to offer. It’s vital that we have them on the pitch and that they can guide young lads through tough games, tell them where they should be, talk to them and coach them through games because we were all at that stage at one stage and looked up to older lads.”

Drumlane have been well tested to date, losing to Arva, coming from behind to beat Knockbride and emerging from a real examination against Drumalee.

“We went 1-3 to no score down after five minutes against Knockbride but we had talked about it before the game, these things can happen. The game is 65 minutes long… we didn’t panic, we chipped away and scored eight points after that nearly unanswered. They’re a young group, I didn’t think too much will faze them, they’ll go out and play their own style of football that we are trying to get them to play.

“We’ll try to keep the opposition obviously down to a bare minimum but if a team gets a run on you, it’s about how you react. Every team gets a purple patch and we knew we would get our purple patch after that and when we did get it, we took our chances.

“Against Mountnugent, we got a run on them early doors, everything fell into place and once you get a run on that, it’s very hard to turn it. We racked up a big score really early and when they pushed up, we were lucky enough that we caught them on the counter. Pleased to get over the line and get a performance but we weren’t reading too much into it either.”

Drumalee was a tough game but they got through it; Arva await, again.

“We spoke about it, we expected it (against Drumalee). We had done our homework on Drumalee, they hadn’t conceded more than 11 points this year and were unlucky not to beat Templeport in the league final. We knew nothing was going to be handed to us, we knew it wasn’t going to be pretty or anything like the quarter-final but the lads showed great character down to 14 men early in the second half. They rolled up the sleeves and pulled through which was very pleasing, a young team who overcame obstacles when the going got tough.

“Our team has probably changed a lot since that game against Arva. We had injuries going into that game but it wasn’t an excuse, we were well below par. In fairness, Arva are a serious team at junior level. It wasn’t that long ago that I was playing with the Gaels and we were playing Arva in Senior Championship and Division 1 league games.

“A few lads emigrated and a couple of injuries has them where they are but I know they wouldn’t be looking at themselves as a junior team. They have serious quality and they showed it that night and we are under no illusions as to the task in front of us.”