YOU could see by the look on their faces, or maybe it was the slightly awkward body language, that a part of Killian Clarke and Barry O’Hagan was dying. Let’s rewind to Croke Park at the end of May last year, and the launch of the inaugural Tailteann Cup.
A few weeks earlier, in the moments after Ulster Championship defeat to Monaghan further compounded a miserable year for the Mournemen, O’Hagan was asked about the shiny new tier-two competition.
The side of the pitch at a sodden St Tiernach’s Park wasn’t the place for platitudes.
“I don’t care about it, to be honest...”
O’Hagan’s tone would soften eventually though and it speaks to the good nature of both men that, having posed for pictures after Cavan and Down were drawn together, they agreed to be filmed, face to face across a desk, talking about – gulp – their meeting the following day.
It is two minutes and 37 seconds that probably felt like a lifetime.
With Down coming off the back of relegation to Division Three, and what felt like daily rumours about key men leaving the panel, expectations were at an all-time low.
“Youse’ll be licking your lips with all this here craic in the paper,” smiled O’Hagan, before they moved onto something else.
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Games between these counties have never been predictable, going away back to the 1960s and ’70s when their rivalry was at its height. But last year’s Tailteann Cup clash was a foregone conclusion before a ball was kicked.
The Breffni buzzing, Down in disarray, Mickey Graham’s men dutifully swept into the last eight with nine points to spare. The pair meet again on Sunday, both vying for promotion to Division Two.
Even reflecting on that encounter last May, Clarke believes it is a mark of a change in the Cavan psyche that they were able to block out the noise and deal with the job at hand, all fuss kept to a minimum.
“There has been a good shift in mentality where we’re focusing on ourselves and our own standards, regardless of what types of team you’re playing,” says the 29-year-old.
“If you’re playing a not as well known, or not as well developed team in Division Four, for example, you still have to set your standards high and achieve your own specific goals.
“We took that into the League last year and then into the Tailteann Cup as well. It was a funny one because you know Down is full of talent, but it’s just that million dollar question – which Down team is going to turn up today?”
Although without injured forward O’Hagan, the Mournemen come in with a momentum they never managed in 2022.
Early season optimism after some blistering Dr McKenna Cup performances has been tempered by the rough and tumble of Division Three, with Down coming out the right side of close encounters against Tipperary, Antrim and Westmeath, as well as losing another to fellow promotion hopefuls Fermanagh.
The manner of those gutsy comebacks against the Saffrons and Westmeath, and even in defeat to the Ernemen, shows their cause is backboned by a bit of steel. Rory Mason and the Johnston brothers, Ryan and Jerome, made a big impact from the bench, with Kilcoo forward Jerome turning out in county colours for the first time since Down’s dramatic 2020 Ulster semi-final defeat to Cavan.
And Clarke expects Sunday’s game to beat little resemblance to last May’s meeting.
“You can see from their League results this year they’re coming with a different attitude… they’re a different prospect altogether.
“The firepower Down have when they’re on song is very threatening, and they have the ability in a number of different positions to turn a game. Obviously they’ve finished very strongly in the last couple of games, but we have too.
“We have shown that we can finish games off well and manage games a lot better than we have in the past.”
With that, Clarke knows, comes expectation – and from the outset Cavan have been leaders of the promotion-chasing pack.
Having played in every rung of the League during an 11 year senior career in Breffni blue, he knows the importance of building among the big boys if steady progress is to continue.
“Obviously Division Three and Division Four have their merits when it comes to maybe blooding young lads that wee bit earlier, but if we can get ourselves back into Division Two next year, with some of the younger players playing against those top teams, if you get results early in the year it can snowball into an Ulster Championship.
“A lot of the older players have played in Division One and Division Two before and you hope that would be a good foundation.
“We’ve found ourselves in the last couple of years where we have been very good in certain areas, and last year we added the scoring ability that had maybe been missing. We have the firepower up front, we’re quite steady at the back with the structure we have there.
“This year we’re trying to add on that consistency of performance.”
And while Cavan have been without the talismanic Gearoid McKiernan due to injury thus far, the return of Dara McVeety - playing at centre-back - has had a huge impact in victories over Westmeath, Tipperary, Longford and Offaly.
McVeety - who had been on his travels since 2019 - was part of the same Cavan U21 team that reached the 2011 All-Ireland final, and Clarke was never in any doubt what the Crosserlough man would offer when he came back into the fold.
“Dara was playing a good bit of football on his travels too, and he’s the type of character who likes to keep himself in shape anyway – he was doing a few triathlons, Ironmans and different bits and pieces. It’s in his DNA.
“His skill set hasn’t dropped off, he still has his step, his aggression, his pace, it’s still all there.
You could play him in the forwards if you needed to but he’s a great tackler so he gets a good few turnovers for us as well.
“But most important is the character that he is, and the demands he would have on himself, keeping standards very high. That is a great asset for the team.”
