AS HE made his way onto the pitch to congratulate his team-mates on a third win on-the-trot, injured forward Niall McDermott had to agree he’ll have to work hard to fight his way back into this Cavan side.
They are now on six points and victories in their last two games, home fixtures against Laois and Galway, will guarantee the Breffni men top flight football next year. After picking up a groin injury in the opening match against Tyrone at Healy Park McDermott will miss both but it’s about the team, not him.
“As long as we’re winning that’s the main thing,” he said.
The Breffni men began with narrow losses against Tyrone and Derry but wins over Meath, Armagh and Fermanagh have followed and now ‘the Blues’ have promotion in their own hands.
In McDermott’s absence Seanie Johnston and Gearoid McKiernan have stood tall and provided the bulk of the scores while the mobile and hard-working Dara McVeety has been part of an impressive supporting cast.
McVeety, who covers acres of ground from the half-forward to the half-back lines, hit three points against Meath and another against the Orchardmen before he was black-carded. Even without him Cavan went on to win by 17 points and he returned to the side last Saturday night in a workmanlike win over Fermanagh.
“In the first two games we didn’t play up to our potential and we knew coming into these three games that we needed to get six points on the board - thankfully, we’ve done that,” said the Crosserlough clubman.
“We were under pressure [after losing the first two games] and we trained hard during the break, we were under pressure coming into the Meath game because we knew we had to get results.
“Every team does hard work at the start of the year and we’re no different. We have lads coming off the shoulder and at the minute it’s working, hopefully we can keep that going. We had to push on a little bit. Everyone was working for each other and thankfully we’ve got the results that we needed.”
Tyrone are already promoted, but it looks likely that the side that joins them won’t be decided until the final round of fixtures and Cavan’s clash with Galway could be the key game.
“In Division Two, everyone is beating each other but we’ve two more games at home and hopefully we can push on for the last two home games and win them and see where that leaves us,” said McVeety.
“If we win the two games it probably will be a possibility. We might need results to go our way but we’ll take it one game at a time. When you’re winning it’s great, when you’re losing it’s not so great. It’s great at the minute but we need to keep that going. One loss and we fall back again so we need to keep the winning attitude going.”
A black card ruled him out of the second half against Armagh, but Cavan’s well-oiled machine didn’t skip a beat: “I got a nice rest last week,” said McVeety with a smile.
“It was good to get back in and get 70 minutes under my belt because I felt like I didn’t do anything but that’s just the way the game is. Niall Murray got a black card tonight and he has to deal with that and come on again.”
