Opinion: Cavan are short on athleticism and depth in the squad

Analysis

Michael Hannon

There are defeats that tell you nothing and then there are defeats that confirm what you already feared.

Cork and Meath both pipped Cavan at the wire in rounds 1 and 2. The nagging feeling after both games was Cavan were only really in the hunt at the end due to their opponents' inaccuracy when shooting. Well beaten, just not on the scoreboard.

And then there are defeats like Sunday in Healy Park - the type that force you to look at your panel and ask uncomfortable but necessary questions.

Thirty-five minutes is how long the illusion lasted. For 35 minutes, Cavan looked capable and competitive. And then the game changed gear, and we couldn't follow.

The early goal wasn't luck. Tiarnan Madden's finish came from Dara McVeety reading Niall Morgan's kick-out and attacking it with intent. It’s strange to be saying this about Niall Morgan's kick-out, but here was a Cavan team that had identified it as a vulnerability and went after it.

For those opening exchanges, Cavan zonally pressed Tyrone's kick-out. The Bradys of Arva, Corofin, Gowna and Killygarry bossed the battle for primary possession. Out of the first 10 kick-outs taken, they won eight, yet only led by 1-4 to 0-4, which didn’t tally. The more I watch them this season the more I see a team struggling to create the volume of clear-cut chances their possession should yield.

When the game stretched in the second half, when it became less about structure and more about raw athleticism, the gap became stark.

Modern Gaelic football, particularly under the new rule interpretations, increasingly reduces to one recurring scenario: isolation. One-on-one, beat your man.

Slow, lateral attacks require players capable of dipping the hips, changing direction and exploding through contact. If you don't have them, you stall. And when you stall, you get turned over.

Cavan currently have a small core of players who can genuinely break a defensive line. Dara McVeety. Gerry Smith. Oisín Brady, Paddy Lynch, Cormac O’Reilly spring to mind. Niall Carolan would also fall into that category if fully fit, but last year's stand-out performer seems hampered at the moment.

The problem is what happens when they are bottled up.

Against Tyrone, once the middle third swung and the supply dried up, Cavan didn't have wave after wave of athletes capable of creating their own score. Tyrone did.

The home side had 12 names on the scoresheet and Conn Kilpatrick and Brian Kennedy generating surge after surge through the middle third. When one channel closed, another opened.

Paddy Lynch came off the bench at half-time and sparked a fightback with five points, including one from a ludicrous angle near the endline but even that wasn't enough to stem the tide.

That's not a criticism of those players – rather, it's an acknowledgment of burden.

The conversation nobody really wants to have is about what's left the panel. Padraig Faulkner, James Smith, Killian Clarke and Killian Brady are among those no longer involved for one reason or another.

That's not just experience, it’s athleticism and physical presence. When you remove that calibre of physical profile from a Division 2 panel, the ripple effect is enormous. It impacts kick-out security, offensive and defensive transitions, and the ability to win second balls. And crucially, it impacts the ceiling.

Every inter-county panel has two defining metrics: its floor - how competitive it can be on an average day - and its ceiling, as in how good it can be when everything clicks.

Cavan's floor is competitive. For 35 minutes on Sunday, we saw that. But the ceiling? That's where the concern lies.

Even with heroics from Liam Brady, who made crucial saves to deny Eoin McElholm and Seanie O'Donnell, there's only so much that structure and organisation can compensate for.

In the second half, Tyrone demolished Cavan's kick-out. Breaking ball was hoovered up by the Red Hands. The territorial advantage Cavan had established evaporated. Replacements were needed earlier to rectify the situation but I'm not sure they're all at the required level of athleticism yet - that takes time.

When you scan the current panel, you struggle to identify a large number of players who, even after 18 months of elite preparation, project as top-level line-breakers. That's not pessimism, it’s talent profiling. It's one of the reasons it was good to see Favour Sheu come on for his league debut as he brings the potential to break lines with his acceleration and speed.

Look at what Tyrone have done with Conn Kilpatrick. After struggling when deployed at full-forward, his return to midfield has transformed their engine room. He’s now the right athlete in the right position.

If the modern game demands 10 or 11 athletes capable of winning one-on-one duels, Cavan currently have four or five healthy ones.

That gap is what Healy Park exposed. It underlines how precarious things become when you're dependent on a handful. If we’re honest, Cavan don't have the luxury of absorbing the loss of even one.

This gap is also one of the reasons, I believe, why Cavan deploy a zonal defence around the arc when most Division 1 and 2 teams are now using strict man-to-man setups. Going man-to-man makes it harder for teams to kick two-pointers. Zonally, you pass on players when they run by you. It also means once you engage defensively you usually have a teammate nearby to help if you're being beaten one-on-one. The group can cover for individual defensive deficiencies, ie athleticism.

What now?

The short-term objective is obvious: survive in Division 2. The good news is Meath, Tyrone, Cork and Derry are the four sides who win the individual athletic match-ups with this Cavan team, and three of those four have been played.

So what can be done tactically to squeeze more out of the current group? If the team could kick to the half-forward position before kicking to the full-forward line, there would be an opportunity to score more goals.

Given the profile of the panel, McVeety to centre-forward with Lynch and Gearoid McKiernan inside gives the team the opportunity to do this thanks to the Crosserlough man's ball-winning ability. Your best kickers have to play off McVeety to release the ball inside. If we're not going to become a two-point kicking team, we have to become a goal machine to keep pace with the development of sides in the division.

Lynch and McKiernan inside would also give teams an issue with match-ups given their physical size. You need to be hitting 1-21 or 1-22 to win games under the new rules. Cavan have enough possession to be doing that but haven’t looked dangerous enough on slow attacks or on transition-style counter-attacks, the exception being when they win the opposition kick-out. Then there is an element of chaos, in a good way, to their attacking play.

Better attacking outcomes would help things defensively too, as less counter attacks would happen. One feeds the other.

There is enough quality in this group to compete, and Sunday's opening 35 minutes proved it. It would really help, though, if they could find a bit more punch up front from multiple threats rather than relying on the same small number of lads, again and again.