Minors end 23-year wait to book place in the Ulster final

The sweet aftermath of a momentous victory at Brewster Park last Sunday evening was cut short for Cavan minors' joint manager Gary Donohoe when he found himself collared by the Fermanagh PRO and frog-marched to the press box for a round of interviews. The Gowna clubman didn't seem to mind - he was articulate in describing the epic which had just unfolded and, crucially, how Cavan managed to buck the trend and come out on the right side of that line. "A lot of good work has been done by Finbar O'Reilly and Andy McGovern and Shaun Doherty, and coaches like that around the county. We haven't been that far away in the last few years, Cavan have been unlucky to lose by the odd score to teams who have gone on to be in All Ireland finals. We're not getting carried away, we're only in an Ulster final, but we'll work hard in the next two weeks and hopefully we'll have another day," said Donohoe, who is joined as bainisteoir by clubmate Dermot McCabe. Cavan are now in an Ulster final, but also, for the first time, an All Ireland quarter-final. That they are there is largely because of two moments of skill from full-forward Conor Finnegan, who bagged a brace of goals in 100 magical seconds. Cavan's game plan had revolved around moving the ball at pace and finding their target man. "That's what Conor is in there for, to win the high ball and the long early ball, and maybe we weren't getting the ball in there early enough. He definitely produced the goods in there for us, when we needed something, he stood up. "We just had a plan there, we stuck with it for the duration of the game. Sometimes we deviated from it and we lost track but by and large, we've a simple game plan and we work to it. What happened in other years, we can't be blamed or faulted for that. We can only do what we can do and we did that today. We worked hard and hopefully we can make 2011 a good year for Cavan minors." And there's a good camaraderie with the lads, Gary? "Well, if we win enough games, we'll all be good buddies!"