THE Breffni men are itching to deliver Ulster SFC glory, their key defender Dara McVeety tells Kevin Óg Carney...
IT’S the oldest cliché in all of sport but speed kills. And in Dara McVeety, Cavan football fans believe they have the kind of stuff needed to fast-track his county’s return to the top table.
McVeety was his county’s best player by a distance in their defeat (0-15 to 1-17) to Tyrone in last month’s NFL Division Two final. Conventional wisdom in Cavan holds that he epitomises what the current team is about right now and, more importantly, what it promises to be.
The Crosserlough player’s pace is augmented by serious stamina and a keen eye for goal (he scored two points from play in the aforementioned league final) and his athleticism makes him a template for the modern-day, box-to-box footballer. McVeety is Cavan’s very own Duracell bunny and is confident that his native county can stay the distance in this year’s provincial Championship.
Losing out to Mickey Harte’s charges at Croker last month hasn’t shaken his belief in that respect: “I really think we have the players to win the Championship this year but it’s up to us to deliver,” the Dublin-based school teacher says.
“A lot of us have done it at underage level and the belief is definitely within the camp that we can push on and do it at senior. The Ulster Championship is so open this year that we must believe we can go the whole way, although Tyrone must still be favourites. I thought they were excellent against us, but, on their day, almost any team in Ulster can beat the other team.”
McVeety declines the invitation to finger a likely winner - sans Cavan - of the Anglo-Celt Cup this July and says his best advice to would-be punters would be to keep their money safely tucked away in their pockets. The tearaway defender was only three years old when Cavan last won the Anglo-Celt Cup (1997).
He reckons that his native county’s spirited showing against Tyrone could well be the hors d’oeuvres of a very tasty Ulster SFC which will leave all other wannabes feeling sourer than curdled milk: “I think having so many different scorers against Tyrone was a big plus for us to take from the game as well as the fact that so many of us got a feel for such a big occasion in front such a big crowd. Those things have to stand to us come the provincial Championship.
“We’re a young team and we’re getting better. We just have to up our game against the big guns on the big day but I definitely think that’s in us. We’ve shown a consistent improvement this year during the National League and I see no reason why we can’t continue to improve and make things happen for ourselves in the Championship.
“Losing out to Derry and Tyrone in this year’s league sort of highlighted the level we had to reach but the way we bounced back with five wins in a row said a lot about the character and the ability of the squad.”
Of course, it’s almost a truism to say that every team evolves over the course of a National League campaign and Cavan’s evolution from poor runners-up to Derry and Tyrone to the country’s form team in mid-April spirited Terry Hyland’s charges under the spotlight like never before in his five years’ association with the county management team. So how much of Cavan’s potential did we witness in this year’s secondary competition?
“We were poor early on but we worked harder as the games came along and probably showed a lot of what we have going for ourselves in the game in Navan. We were seven points down at half-time [against Meath], but really went for it in the second half and pushed forward as often as we could and, thankfully, we got our reward with a great win that spurred us on to get into the final against Tyrone.”
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McVeety says it was the Cavan players themselves who decided to do a volte face and run at Meath with lung-bursting runs with gay abandon in the hunt for match-winning scores: “There wasn’t any directive from the team-management at halftime. I think it was a collective decision by everyone in the Cavan camp to give it a go and, fortunately, we produced our best half of football all year.
“The thing we have to aim for in the Championship is to repeat our second-half performance against Meath for the full 70 minutes. I think we’ll have to go close to achieving that target if we’re to win it this year.”
McVeety is clearly in half-glassfull mode as the Championship meeting with Armagh draws ever so near. Hardly surprising, of course, considering that his county hockeyed the Orchard county at Kingspan Breffni Park by 3-18 to 0-10 in this year’s NFL.
Cavan are clear favourites with the local turf accountants to seal a place in the provincial semifinals, but McVeety bluntly says “Armagh won’t be as poor as they were the last time we met”: “Our win over them [Armagh] in the league this year will be completely irrelevant come the end of the month.
"It was a strange game. We got a run on them early on and pushed on. Armagh have got a lot of quality footballers and they’ll have no fear in Breffni Park. Kieran McGeeney will have them revved up and I’m sure they’ll use their physicality to good effect. They’ve a very good half-back line too so we’ll get nothing easy.”
With the guts of a week’s training camp in Portugal just behind them, McVeety and co. are at the ready. He has one Ulster MFC and three Ulster U21 FC medals to his credit to date. He can’t wait to add a senior provincial gong to his collection.
Cavan fans will join with him in carrying a banner of expectation rather than hope.
STRENGTHS
History does not weigh heavily on the current squad who have more inter-county medals than any group of Cavan players for 60 years. Winning is in the players’ DNA and they truly belief that the Elysian Fields are in sight.
For years, Breffni sides were almost beaten before they went into battle but the self-belief coursing through Terry Hyland’s charges is granite-like. No team in the country, bar Dublin perhaps, could deem themselves as being more athletic than Cavan. They won’t be out-run or out-manoeuvred whatever the Ulster bearpit they find themselves in in the coming months.
Men like Jason McLoughlin, Killian Clarke, Dara McVeety, Niall Murray, Martin Reilly and Cian Mackey could run for Ireland. Has another county got a better spread of score-takers? Twelve Cavan players made their mark on the scoreboard against Tyrone last time out at Croker including six players removed from the forward lines.
Cavan have serious options up front. The team boasts a raft of old heads on young shoulders. Rising stars like Killian Clarke, Conor Moynagh, Tomas Corr, Cian Mackey and Gearoid McKiernan are born leaders.
The current Cavan team is unlikely to unravel in the heat of battle.
WEAKNESSES
Goals win Championship matches and Cavan still fail to inspire confidence in their ability to turn hard-won possession into the hard coinage of majors. The team improved greatly on their tally of one goal in the 2015 NFL by notching eight goals in this year’s league but, pointedly, they failed to find the net against Tyrone in their league encounters.
Cavan’s free-taking has been suspect this year; apparent during their five-match winning run during the league and even in the narrow losses to Derry and Tyrone in the opening rounds. The management has turned to goalkeeper Raymond Galligan with mixed results to date.
Cavan’s concession rate in this year’s NFL Division Two flattered them. The Blues conceded a total just three points less (90) than mid-table Fermanagh. Against higher-quality opponents, Cavan might well have ended the league in the red in terms of scoring difference as misses by attackers of a Galway, Armagh and Meath hue let the Blues off the hook time and time again.
Cavan look as if they can’t afford to have the talismanic Gearoid McKiernan removed from midfield. Using McKiernan on the half-forward line appears to be a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul and come the blue riband fare, that could prove very costly.
