Eirgrid Ulster U20 Football Championship semi-final: Derry v Cavan (tonight, The Athletic Grounds, 8pm)
ANYONE who wasn’t paying attention to Damien Donohue’s Cavan side before last weekend certainly is now after the young Breffnimen crushed Monaghan in Inniskeen to record the most eye-catching result from last weekend’s quarter-finals.
Ulster finalists last year, Monaghan never recovered after Darragh Lovett breached their defence and Cavan went on to record an impressive 1-11 to 0-3 victory.
Meanwhile, Lachlan Murray (0-5) and six frees from fellow All-Ireland minor winner Charlie Diamond propelled Derry to a 0-12 to 0-9 win over battling Antrim. With injury issues mounting, Derry manager Paddy Bradley said his understrength side was just delighted to get the line at Owenbeg.
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“We never looked beyond Antrim until we got over them, so I watched Monaghan and Cavan this week,” he said.
“I wasn’t surprised with how well Cavan played but, with the core of players that they have, I thought Monaghan would have given them a better game.
“Cavan have quality all over the pitch. They’re very good defensively, they don’t give much away and they’ve a couple-or-three really good attackers. They’re big and physical too as all Cavan teams are so it’s going to be a very difficult task for us. A lot of people might see us as favourites but I don’t see it that way, it’s going to be another 50-50 game and we’re going to need everybody to stand up and be counted if we’re going to get any sort of a result.”
Derry went in at half-time on level terms with Antrim (0-5 apiece) but pulled away after the break to win by three points thanks to the finishing power of Murray and Diamond.
Matthew and Callum Downey, Eoin McEvoy, Jack Scullion, James McGurk and Ronan McFaul all missed the opener and the only glimmer of good news on the injury front is that full-back McFaul could return to action tonight.
“We have been training with skeleton-squads,” Bradley explained.
“There’s nights we’ve been training with 15-16 men. Lachlan (Murray) had been involved with the seniors up until last Sunday and he had never trained with the boys at all and I thought in the first half that showed a lot.
“We were very, very disjointed but we had a good chat at half-time and we tweaked a few things that worked well for us in the second half and individuals really stood up. The problem with the competition being week-on-week is you have a shot turnaround.
“Yes, in one sense it can be to your advantage if you have a full bill of health but we’re on the flipside of the coin and we would have loved an extra couple of weeks to try and get more men back on the field.
“But that’s the way it is and we’re not going to complain about it, we have a panel of men who are committed to try and do well. We know it’s going to be an uphill struggle but we’re up for the challenge. We’ve worked on our attacking play at training and hopefully we can bring that to the fore tomorrow night. If we can then we’re definitely not without a chance.”
