Ulster U-20 Championship final

Cavan v Tyrone

Friday, Brewster Park, 8pm

By Niall Gartland

PRESSURE is for tires? The Cavan supporters are renowned for their passion and fervour, but they can also be a demanding bunch and the knives were out after their u-20 team was blitzed by Down in last year’s Ulster Championship.

Manager Damien Donohoe left the field that night a very disappointed man, but he has more than made amends this season, leading the team to a rather unexpected Ulster Championship final berth.

Whatever happens against Tyrone this Friday, considerable progress has been made, and Donohoe says that the only people who matter are the genuine well-wishers in the county, rather than the critics.

“A member of our backroom team said the reality was that if we lost to Monaghan in the first round, no-one in Cavan was going to be talking to me and I was gone.

“You don’t get another chance in Ulster and it can be tough, but that’s what you expect when you get into a job like this.

“It’s probably wrong to call it ‘pressure’. The genuine Cavan supporters will move mountains for you and are only too happy to help. I’ll take that over a bunch of people who don’t care any day.”

That was evident in the lead-up to their super semi-final win over Derry as club managers across the county came forward and offered their advice on how to get the better of the Oakleafers, many of whom had All-Ireland minor medals in their back-pockets.

“A lot of club managers offered their help. The support that Cavan gets is always phenomenal.

“I thought after the Monaghan game I got a lot of messages but my phone burnt out completely after the Derry win, it was too much to process almost.

“You have to expect that, we come from a county where we love and pride ourselves on our football and we’re trying to restore the pride in the underage jersey in Cavan.

“We’ve won a couple of games against really good sides but that’s really what we want to aspire to anyway.”

Cavan adopted a fairly defensive formation against Derry, limiting their highly rated opponents to only nine points across the hour. Their Ulster final opponents Tyrone have an array of talented forwards, so Donohoe knows it would be foolish to let Ruairi Canavan and co have the run of things.

“Our priority is to do what it takes to win. We want to play as attacking as possible and move the ball as fast as we can, but sometimes the way opponents are set up makes it difficult to do so.

“That’s the beauty of our lads, they’re an incredibly intelligent bunch of players and they’re able to make the right decisions to get the right result.

“We’ve studied Tyrone and right through the middle and on the wings they’ve a lot of top players, and there’s talk about some of them being brought into the county squad. They’ve a spread of players who can cause you problems, but while we’ll be respectful of them, we’re looking to play our own game as well.”

Donohoe also admits that they were driven to make amends for the nightmare of last year’s heavy defeat to Down. They’ve done that and more, but now the task is to win their first Ulster final at this level since their astonishing four in-a-row run from 2011 and 2014.

“We were definitely looking to rectify that defeat and show that we’re a better team than we showed against Down.

“That was the goal for everyone. I’m not a big gambling man but everyone tells me we’ve been underdogs in all our games so far – it’s something we’re used to and not that bothered by.”