After a gut-wrenching defeat at the hands of Tyrone yesterday, Cavan manager Raymond Galligan was philosophical. Asked his immediate reaction, the Lacken clubman stressed that he couldn’t have asked for any more in terms of effort from his players.
“That’s football I suppose, there’s always going to be a winner and a loser when you have tight games like that,” the former goalkeeper stated.
“I’m immensely proud of the lads, the effort and the honesty from each and every man that started and came off the bench, so in that regard I couldn’t ask for any more, but it’s just very disappointing for the lads because they probably deserved a little better.”
Cavan, he said, could have won the match in normal time, despite being eight points down midway through the second half.
“I think so, you had huge momentum there in the last 15, 20 minutes but at the same time, in extra-time there was still only a point in at half-time and we got turned over cheaply once or twice. When it went back to two it was difficult but even at the end there, you had an opportunity maybe to get a shot off… but that’s the way it goes.
“But look, all in all, we had opportunities in the first half, four balls dropped into the keeper’s hands. If that gap was a little narrower at half-time you would have had a little less to do. I’ll have to look back and see.”
That first-half performance, in which Cavan struggled to contain Tyrone at one end and missed good chances at the other, proved costly.
“We had seven wides in the first half and I think they might have had only one or two. The big thing was we stepped off the kick-out at times in the first half and I think it kind of worked, but they scored 1-6 from our turnovers – that’s from bringing ball into the tackle, something you just cannot do.
“We knew they lived off turnovers throughout the League so giving a team like Tyrone oxygen, bringing the ball into the tackle… But I thought we regrouped and worked extremely hard in the second half on staying in control and keeping that ball and running harder lines and it got us back into the game.”
While Cavan’s winless streak against the Red Hands in Championship now stretches to 11 games, it wasn’t something Galligan referenced in the build-up.
“The narrative all week was it was all about us, we’re definitely not in the business of looking behind us and looking at the records because that only brings a burden on the players. For us it was about bringing our game, we probably didn’t get enough depth in our game, bringing more bodies ahead of the attack in the first half.
“That can be for an array of different reasons but I thought in the second half by getting more runners, more energy and keeping the ball out of contact, it really paid dividends for us to get back into the game.”