WIN, lose or draw, teams can’t afford to dwell long on what has gone in Division Two, says Cavan full-back Killian Brady.
The Breffnimen travelled to Carlow to beat Kildare in their opener but then lost by a whisker at home against Donegal last time out. Beating Jim McGuinness’s side would have been a prized feather in their cap but with a trip to Cork to come on Saturday, Brady says Cavan have to take the positives and keep looking forward.
“It was disappointing of course,” he said.
“But in this division there are points up for grabs every day. We got a positive result against Cavan and a positive performance, in some aspects, against Donegal. You take the positives – we moved the ball well at times and we got it into our forwards who can do danger, we were under pressure in the second half on our own kickout but we worked hard and we did quite well on it.
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“The game looked to be getting away from us in the second half when we were four points down but we created the chances and we took them to get back into the game. We can take a bit of heart out of that and take that into the Cork game but it was disappointing towards the end because we got ourselves into a winning position.
“We didn’t push on but we’ll move on and you have to move on quickly in this division, you can’t hang around.”
While Cavan can afford to be a little philosophical after a defeat, their hosts on Saturday have no such luxury. The Rebels struck out in their games against Donegal and Cork and they urgently need a result to start moving away from the bottom of the table.
“They had a couple of disappointing results so they’ll definitely be hurting,” says Brady.
“They’ll have been happy to get a break where we would have been happy to keep going.
“Cork away is going to be a tricky one.”
The truth is that they’re all tricky ones in Division Two. Frontrunners Armagh shaded Louth by a point in their opener and second-placed Donegal got out of Kingspan Breffni by the skin of their teeth. The games are all tight and the teams that win the key moments go home with the points.
“It was important to get the win in the first round because we knew we had a tough start,” said Brady.
“Kildare have lost two now but at the start of the season they would have been fancied as one of the stronger teams in the division.
“You need to be picking up points along the way and we have a couple of points on the board so we’re still in a positive place and you have to keep going.
“We lost to Donegal but we can’t let that define our season and we all know how good that Donegal team is. We were confident we would match up well against them, unfortunately it wasn’t enough to get across the line but hopefully we’ll meet them down the line at some stage and we’ll work on a few things for that.”