National Football League Division Two

Cavan v Westmeath

Saturday, Kingspan Breffni, 7pm

MICKEY Graham deserves praise for fronting up after Cavan’s 13-point hammering at the hands of Armagh last weekend – and he has called on his players to do likewise as they welcome Westmeath to Kingspan Breffni on Saturday night.

Media duties would have been ignored by many bosses after such a hard night’s work, but Graham didn’t hide and answered everything that was put to him with complete honesty.

It’s hard to escape the notion that not everything is rosy in the camp. The quantity and quality of defections was worrying in the winter and the performance against Armagh really set off the alarm bells.

This Westmeath match will be a good barometer. The manager is hurting, and the players must show that they are too. This game will be a window into the state of the Cavan squad.

Graham issued an apology to the small band of Cavan fans that travelled to the Athletic Grounds last Saturday. The fact that there was so little blue on show in the crowd was another concern.

The manager said that there could only be one acceptable response, and that was a fully committed performance against Westmeath.

“The focus is to get back on the field and start playing football,” said Graham.

“We’re looking forward to that game because it’s our first home game of the season. Westmeath will be coming full of confidence after getting promoted last year so it will be no easy task. There’s not going to be any easy games in Division Two.

“We just have to take it one game at a time and look no further than that to try and shrug off that huge disappointment (the defeat to Armagh).”

The Breffni boss pulled no punches in his summary of the defeat to the Orchard county.

“It’s just not good enough and you just have to apologise to the Cavan people who made the journey to watch that.

“Any time we take to field you like to go out and put your best foot forward. Unfortunately things didn’t happen for us.

“The lads are gutted because they know, more importantly, that they let themselves down. They let the management, the whole group down.

“We all take responsibility for it, management, players, we all have to take a good look at ourselves and see where we go from here.”

Much has been made of Cavan’s MIA list this year with star players like Dara McVeety, Conor Moynagh and Cian Mackey amongst those currently not present from last year.

Graham said that the current group still set high standards for themselves even with those losses, and he believes that they will respond in the right manner against Westmeath.

“We have lads that want to play with Cavan,” he said.

“It’s well documented the players that aren’t with Cavan. That’s the reality of it and we just have to get on with what we have.

“We have a bunch of lads that want to play and are putting in a huge effort.

“For them, to go down to a defeat like that will hurt them and we want to get a response out of them now. Hopefully we will see a reaction from them because I think now they would be very disappointed.

“Hopefully they can dust themselves off, you’re only as good as your last game and we just have to make sure that we get our heads up.”

Westmeath come into the game on the back of a hard-fought win over Clare in round one.

It looked like the shares would be spoiled until John Heslin stepped up to land a 75th minute winning free. Killian Daly will miss the match through suspension having been dismissed in the final moments of that game.

n.mccoy@gaeliclife.com