FOOTBALL ULSTER SENIOR CHAMPIONSHIP
Ulster Senior Football Championship
quarter-final
MONAGHAN V CAVAN

Saturday, St Tiernach’s Park, 1.15pm

BY NIALL MCCOY

PERCEPTIONS are hard things to shake off. A Monaghan side over-reliant on Conor McManus meets a Cavan team that waste too many opportunities at Clones on Saturday afternoon. In reality, just how big are those issues ahead of this ‘new normal’ derby?

Let’s take the McManus conundrum. Since the inter-county season resumed this month, the idea that the Oriel attack would be lost without the Clontibret star has only been reinforced.

McManus played the second half of the Division One loss to Kerry and the full game in Sunday’s draw with Meath, and still kicked 47 percent of their scores.

For comparison over the two final games, David Clifford posted 27 percent of Kerry’s scores, Dean Rock managed 39 percent of Dublin’s scores and Rian O’Neill kicked 31 percent of Armagh’s scores. Keep in mind that those three played two full games compared to McManus’s one and a half.

The simple belief is that if your opponents have one key scorer then he can be bottled up and the side has nowhere to go. While true, bottling up McManus is another story and is something that very few defences have achieved over the last decade.

One man who has done relatively well on him, especially in last year’s four-point Ulster win, is Breffni defender Padraig Faulkner. The Kingscourt man will be given the unenviable task again here despite playing further out the field in recent weeks. If he can break even 50-50 then Cavan’s chances improve significantly.

If that happens then Seamus McEnaney’s supporting cast must really step up. The forward play has been good, but it still needs a bit of polish with the first four attacks after half time against Kerry proving that point. From 36:33 on the clock to 40:27, the side put together four excellent attacking passages of play, but the end result was three wides and one effort dropped short.

Some of that poor decision-making extended into the Meath game, when they butchered a number of goal-scoring opportunities. It could have ended in their relegation to Division Two.

It didn’t, mostly down to McManus’s intervention, but it’s clear that Niall Kearns’s driving influence from the middle is being missed in terms of opening gaps. The player hasn’t been in either matchday squad and it remains to be seen if he’ll be back for the Cavan game. Colin Walshe is expected to make his return to the bench having injured himself on club duty with Doohamlet.

There is, of course, the notion that McEnaney has been keeping an eye on this clash all along since the return to action. The intensity levels have not been at the highest, but that may change against the Breffni county even if the roar of the crowd will be absent.

If there was one word to describe Cavan’s performances in their losses to Kildare and Roscommon then it would be ‘wasteful’.

It’s a trait that has bugged them all season, but if you think their round one no-show against Armagh, their scoring average sat at a very healthy 17.33 points in a league campaign that ended in relegation to Division Three.

Still, it could have been much better. Against Kildare they kicked 12 wides, dropped six efforts short and Martin Reilly missed a penalty. They kicked 16 wides against Roscommon. Even a bit more composure would have seen them maintain their Division Two status.

Players like Cormac Timoney, Cormac O’Reilly, Oisin Brady and highly-rated youngster Caoimhín McGovern got their first minutes for Cavan in those defeats as Graham had to deal with Covid issues, and that may give him another option or two this weekend. O’Reilly, in particular, has caught the eye and looks good for a start at St Tiernach’s Park.

There are other reasons to think that last year’s Ulster finalists will have plenty of options to call on. Niall Murray was due to miss the entire season but the prolonged break allowed him to make a return against Roscommon, although his early withdrawal last week suggests that he maybe isn’t up to full speed just yet. Killian Clarke made his return against Roscommon while Thomas Galligan made an impressive cameo from the bench.

The mood within the county is not overly positive heading into the fixture but, like Monaghan, Cavan deserve the chance to show that they can raise the intensity for the championship. It certainly will need to be a massive step up on what they showed against a Roscommon side depleted by Covid as it simply wasn’t good enough.

Even if that intensity arrives, it’s unlikely to be enough. Monaghan may be dependent on Conor McManus, but he delivers nine times out 10. Cavan do not have a similar go-to man and that’s likely to be the difference.