Cavan Senior Football Championship final: Castlerahan 1-19 Lavey 1-16
Hot-favourites Castlerahan withstood a gutsy second-half display by Lavey to reach their fourth consecutive Cavan SFC final after a dour affair in Kingscourt.
On a sodden pitch, neither side managed to dictate matters for anything more than fleeting minutes with the football laced with perspiration rather than inspiration.
Castlerahan – seeking to take one step further in pursuit of a first-ever SFC triumph - laid the foundations for their deserved if not altogether impressive victory by constructing a 1-11 to 0-6 cushioned lead by half-time.
Instead of getting the sort of start to the match all underdogs crave, Lavey found themselves playing catch-up from the 6th minute when Oisín O’Connell punished a large dollop of hesitancy in the Lavey full-back line to fire home and give his side a 1-1 to 0-1 lead.
“It was great to get the early goal and get off to such a good start,” Castlerahan captain Ronan Flanagan enthused after the game.
“Then when we were able to work our way into a 1-3 to one point lead after less than 10 minutes, we had a good bit of momentum going for us. That was the kind of opening spell any team would love to get.
“I suppose getting into a relatively good lead so early on was one thing but we had to build on it and fair play to the lads, they did that and we were able to go ahead and put in probably our best first half display of the year so far.”
To their credit, Lavey kept nipping away at the heels of their opponents as the first half gathered pace but when midfielder David Wright popped over his third point of the evening in the 19th minute to make it 1-6 to 0-4, it appeared as if Lavey had a lot to do.
And things got worse for Lavey before they got better with messrs. Enda Flanagan, Cormac Daly, Sean Brady and Cian Mackey all grabbing a point apiece, without reply, in the run into the half-time break.
Lavey did give a hint of their mini-fightback though when Chris Conroy had the final score of the first half to make it an eight point game.
Former Cavan senior countyman Flanagan agreed that Lavey really ought not to have been given the chance to stay in the hunt given the magnitude of Castlerahan’s interval lead:
“We would have liked to have put the game to bed early in the second half but it didn’t work out that way. We missed a few chances soon after half-time and maybe a bit of complacency crept into our play which can be understandable with any team that has built up the kind of lead we had at half-time.
“We did go for it though. We weren’t going to sit back and maybe that gave them more openings coming forward than would happen normally with such a gap between the sides.
“We know Lavey would battle to the end; they’re great battlers and it was always going to be a case that they’d have a patch or two in the match when they’d get on top. It was just a matter for us to match their good spells with good spells of our own to ensure that we saw the game out.”
Lavey got a huge boost just three minutes into the second half when Chris Conroy converted a penalty and after Shane Tierney split the posts in the 45th minute, Castlerahan’s lead was cut to just two points, 1-13 to 1-11.
However unanswered points between the 46th and 57th minute from Shane McSweeney, Karl Cosgrove, Oisín O’Connell and Enda Flanagan gave Castlerahan just the breathing space they needed to get over the line.
Castlerahan scorers: Oisín O’Connell (1-2); Enda Flanagan (0-4); Cian Mackey (0-3); David Wright (0-3); Stephen Cooney (0-2); Cormac Daly (0-2); Sean Brady (0-1); Shane McSweeney (0-1); Karl Cosgrove (0-1).
Lavey scorers: Chris Conroy (1-4, 3f, pen, ’45); Shane Tierney (0-6); Gerard Smith (0-2); Karl Duke (0-2); Paul Gilchreest (0-1); Darragh Conaty (0-1).
