By Niall Gartland

CAVAN host Monaghan in their first competitive outing of the new season in Saturday’s Division Two clash at Kingspan Breffni, but they aren’t coming in cold after a useful run of challenge games in recent weeks.

Raymond Galligan’s side clocked up plenty of miles as they travelled to Kerry, Derry and Donegal, three Division One teams, and by all accounts they proved to be useful exercises.

Indeed, local paper, The Anglo Celt, published a hugely informative match report following the Derry game, penned by Damien Donohoe.

They played without usual regulars Ciarán Brady, Niall Carolan, Padraig Faulkner and Killian Brady, not to mention Gearóid McKiernan who returned to the fold during the off-season. They did field experienced campaigners Jason McLoughlin, Dara McVeety, Luke Fortune, Oisin Kiernan, Killian Clarke, Gerard Smith and James Smith.

A number of new additions played from the start, namely former county minor captain Evan Crowe, Luke Molloy and Sean McEvoy, while Ruairi Curran, Darragh Dolan and Michael Brady all came off the bench.

They lost narrowly but there were plenty of plus points, including a tigerish defensive performance from Brían O’Connell who held Derry star Shane McGuigan scoreless from play.

Paddy Lynch, meanwhile, is continuing his rebab from an ACL though they do have McKiernan back – a man well capable of landing ‘two pointers’ while the news that Sean McEvoy has been called up is an exciting one.

The Ramor forward played for the county underage and was part of the senior panel under Mickey Graham but moved to Baltimore where he played soccer.

Galligan is entering his second year as manager of Cavan’s senior footballers and while they had a decent league campaign in 2024, finishing third in the table, before claiming an eye-catching win over Monaghan in the preliminary round of Ulster, their season petered out, not helped by the ACL injury sustained to Lynch after their provincial campaign was ended in extra-time by Tyrone.

The Breffni County last played Division One football in 2019 and promotion out of Division Two will be the obvious target.

They finished third in the rankings last season – but in reality, they were a long way behind Armagh and Donegal (Cavan had seven points to show for their efforts while Armagh and Donegal chalked up 12 and 13 points respectively). Division Two arguably isn’t as strong this time around, Cavan have bolstered their panel so there’s no reason why they can’t better last year’s efforts.