HE MAY be asked to police Galway’s top-ranked attacker on Sunday, but Cavan defender Killian Brady says the fear of losing his place on the team is more likely to keep him awake.
Brady has been labelled Cavan’s ‘enforcer’ by some of his county’s supporters and word has it the Mullahoran defender could be tasked with keeping Damien Comer quiet in the teams’ winner-take-all’ Division Two NFL duel at Kingspan Breffni Park.
The Cavan management have made it a point of emptying their bench for every single match this year to date and Brady himself got called ashore after 66 minutes of last weekend’s victory over Laois: “The competition for places on the team and on the panel is something serious,” Brady conceded.
“The team is thriving at the minute and maybe that competition is a major reason why we’ve been doing so well over the last few weeks as some of the older fellas come back from injury and other younger ones look to stake their claim for a place.
“I was lucky to get back into the team after a couple of injuries. I want to stay in the team so the fellas that are breathing down my neck are the ones that are driving me on. Jack Brady came in as a sub against Laois and scored two great points. There are other fellas who weren’t even part of the 26 for that game and they’re motivating everyone to be at their best.”
Cavan need just to avoid defeat in this weekend’s final round game to book their place in the top flight for 2017 and Brady doesn’t begin to dilute the importance of moving up a division. Ahead of what should be the mother and father of battles, the 25-year-old farmer is comforted by the fact that the ball is in Cavan’s court and that the onus is on Galway to play the party pooper.
“It’s in our own hands so we have nothing to fear as such,” he said.
“We’ve shown in our last four matches that we’ve won that the belief is there and so is the confidence and I think we can take a leaf out of Roscommon’s recent record and make the transition from a division three team to a decent division one team. We don’t want to think too far ahead, though, because if we lose sight of having to get the right result on Sunday, we could trip ourselves up like we did last year.”
In 2015, Cavan self-imploded in their bid to get promotion from division two with the picking up of successive red cards against Down and Kildare contributing in a big way to their failure to leap into the top flight.
Terry Hyland’s men have posted 7-86 over their last six matches making the Breffni Blues the fourth highest scorers among in the National League this year but the south Ulster crew have conceded just two goals all season.
Brady is proud of Cavan’s new defensive record but he insists that their infamous ‘blanket’ hasn’t been binned: “I wouldn’t say we’ve changed our style but we’re definitely tighter at the back than we were over the last couple of years,” he said.
“We’re stronger all-round the further you go up the field and that has helped us at the back a lot. Now we have so much pace and such a good cutting edge that we can afford to push players forward more and still crowd things out in front of our goal at the same time.
“There’s great confidence among the lads. We genuinely believe we can beat anyone in Ulster this year but we need to test ourselves by playing consistently in division one and that’s why this Sunday’s game is so important.”
