By Niall Gartland

CUCHULAINN’S have achieved promotion from Division Two but their manager Fintan Cahill is feeling a little bit pensive ahead of the start of their Intermediate Championship campaign.

They take on Belturbet in their opening group stage clash this weekend but they’ve been hit hard by injuries and upsets are common place right across the club championships in Cavan.

This isn’t Cahill’s first stint managing his native club and they don’t have a particularly illustrious record down the years in championship football and his message this week is very much one of caution.

“We set out a few goals at the start of the year and getting promotion out of the league was one of them. We lost the league final to Knockbride but had already been promoted at that stage so that’s a big positive.

“We have a lot of young players coming through and like every other club we seem to be decimated with injuries and we’ll take a look tonight (Monday) to see exactly where we’re at. What is it with all these injuries nowadays, is it all the weight programmes and strength and conditioning? It just seems players are so finely tuned.

“But we’re in a reasonable positon. We played Belturbet early in the league, the first game in fact, we won that one just about. But early on in the year clubs have a lot of injuries so we don’t really know where we stand with him.

“It’s going to be championship football and anything can happen on the day.

“All in all we’re happy with where we’re at but in eight weeks’ time give me a call and it could be an entirely different tune.”

The former Cavan star is glad that his young side will have the experience of playing in Division One next season, but the championship is decoupled so they need to win the title to make the step up to the senior ranks in 2024.

“They’re a great bunch of young fellas and it’s great to be back in with them. It’ll be great to play in Division One next season, I don’t like saying it but it’s a higher standard of football, a higher level of physicality, it’s much faster and I think we’ll cope well.

“It’d be nice to get up to the senior championship as well so they need to win the Intermediate title one of these years.

“In Cavan you could potentially be senior league and junior championship which is bananas really.

“It’s like Arva, they’re in the Junior league as they have four or five guys in the county panel and they struggle when they’re unavailable. I think it’s unfair really.”