Cavan lost to Armagh, and everyone is calling for |the managers head why ?.
Look at the panel that Donal Keogan had to select from.
Yesterday he did his best with a very poor panel of players.
On the positive side our Goalkeeper was brillant ( possible all star performance).
If you look at Cavan football too many junior teams playing football at a low level.
The skills are gone from Cavan football .
I suppose with us out of the Ulster Championship the Vultures from LOndon and the USA will start to circle the squad.
Donal stick firm you have odne a good job with a poor panel.

tomsmith (Cavan) - Posts: 4086 - 16/06/2008 11:01:02    33061

There u go agaain tom smith u haven't a clue do u
For a start off why was keogan choppping and changing 2 midfielders yesterday its now the championship and he should know who his best players are at this stage, mc cabe finished as is forde he was terrible yesterday way off the pace and loosing pocession too easily we may also foget about jason reilly, mackey, mc donnell and mulvey. we have at least half a dozen decent players in the goalie james reilly, mc keever, johnston, sean brady, flanagan, podge and martin cahill.
One ques? for u t smith why did keogan leave hannon on mc donnell for the whole 70 mins disgracful he beat cavan on his own yesterday.
Another reason why keogan should not b manager there are a lot of players whos should be on the panel that aren't there for example: gaynor, lyng, pierson, paul brady 4 very good players who would have made a difference,
I think for the better of Cavan football keogan, mc cabe, forde and jason reilly need to leave the cavan set up and its now time to rebuild?
I would rather stephen king and damien reilly as a joint management team for next season two excellent servants to cavan football over the years.

D_Dude (Cavan) - Posts: 360 - 16/06/2008 11:54:19    33119

D-Dude. Tom Smiths Talks some rubbish but you are almost his equal. Now I believe Keoghan is a poor excuse of a manager as a start and I want him changed. But you are talknig rubbish about Forde and McCabe. Forde had a good game and McCabe won or broke any ball that went into him - problem is hardly any went in. Hannon is the best man marker in the county but he didn't have a hope on a player of McDonnells class when ball after ball keep going in. The problem was midfield and everything else stemmed from there. No pressure on the midfielder putting in the ball either. I think you are being harsh on the players who tried their best yesterday in spite of the manager.

mylestheslasher (Cavan) - Posts: 91 - 16/06/2008 12:12:45    33144

As a non-cavanman who watched the Game yesterday, i would like to voice my opinion of support for Dermot Mc Cabe who i think is far from finished. In my opinion he would STILL make it onto every ulster team, and I thought that he created havoc when moved into the front line. I thought his first point in the second half was going to ignite a Cavan team that badly needed to be ignited, unfortunately for whatever reason I think some of the Cavan players could not play the game to his strenghts.

Mc Cabe stands tall and fights to the very end, and you can see that he, like many of the great Cavan supporters, believe that they can beat everybody!!!. It is this belief that i think is lacking elsewhere around the park, and potentially on the line aswell.

TrophyChaser (Monaghan) - Posts: 6 - 16/06/2008 12:35:42    33169

Trophychaser

McCabe to be fair always rises to the occasion. Too many passengers on the team. We are in a different league lads!

Con Cavan (Cavan) - Posts: 894 - 16/06/2008 13:37:01    33212

Lost at midfield.
Not enough actual defenders who can tackle mark and block
Too light in the half back and half forward lines.
Ball to FF line was to slow

That is what cost us. McCabe not finished yet but not able for 70 mins at midfield.

Crash Bang Wallop (None) - Posts: 268 - 16/06/2008 14:01:09    33229

Did anyone see Mulvey's face when he was taken off - not happy. Would he play for Keoghan again ?

opa01 (Cavan) - Posts: 540 - 16/06/2008 14:09:46    33234

U can forget about Mulvey and that young mc donnell guy not near good enough for county,

As for mc cabe we might get one or two more seasons out of him at full forward thats about it he was arguing with the umpires towards the end yesterday when he should b playing football.
As for forde he gave away pocession and looked off the pace on many occassions yesterday as he did the time i saw him play roscommen in croke park so in my opinion he's not good enough for county anymore when we had a good team back in the late 90's he was only able to make the bench, think jayo has had his day as well, not being cynical or anything but there comes a time when players need to call it a day and give the younger guys a chance to prove themselves.
Don't get me wrong they have been good servants to cavan football over the years and will prob take coaching roles in the future

D_Dude (Cavan) - Posts: 360 - 16/06/2008 16:06:43    33359

For starters cavan needs a good tactical manager,too many players being played in the wrong positions,MC CABE would be great in full forward if they would kick the ball in to him,we didnt , would of done more damage in midfield,MK KEEVER-it should be the half back line for him were wasting our good players on placing they dont play,paric reilly and hannon should of switched markers to see did they get on any better,we had the use of fannon ?walsh?he couldnt of done any worsre,we had our whole team out there busting themselves running with no plan and in the wrong positions,plus pauric reilly should be a half back.plus johnston should being back out the field on the 20 in case mc cabe did get a long ball in,we have the players to be a good enough team-yesterday three things let us down.1 simple ball handling. 2 simple passing. 3 some sort of a plan.

bisto kid (Cavan) - Posts: 492 - 16/06/2008 18:43:55    33466

tom smith... according to you, junior players let the side down and yet James Reilly gave an "all star performance" and him playing with a junior championship team - Drung.... you're an idoit

CeltMan (Cavan) - Posts: 101 - 16/06/2008 19:29:02    33484

get of hannons back ronan clarke destroyed podge aswell the team is too light. some pk performances flanagan mc keever tried very hard

scooby (Cavan) - Posts: 87 - 16/06/2008 20:33:21    33508

wel for all those doubters let it be known that Mulvey had a hamstring injury!!Lets not forget who dominated mid-field against Antrim!

Loose cannon (Cavan) - Posts: 24 - 16/06/2008 22:11:31    33550

I have to say that in previous posts I was a big fan of Mulveys.
I have been on record to say that Mulvey and Cunnigham should have got trials long ago.
But I have to say after that what I saw yesterday, that very few junior footballers have a place at Senior County level.
The pace is faster, the ball control is different and the atmosphere at big games is daunting for juniors who only see a big crowd when a melee is expected with a local rival junior club


Tom Smyth

tomsmith (Cavan) - Posts: 4086 - 17/06/2008 00:06:10    33589

Well done to Cavan Minors on sunday. They looked really good second half. Niall murray is a super player. There were also very good performances from many of the other players. I though M leddy C smith The 2 midfielders the other nialls done very well. Its a pity there is no back door system for the minors (unless you get to ulster final) i am not saying that we will lose to tyrone but They are a top team. we should give them a good game but if we happen to lose then its a shame that its over for another year. i think if we managed to get to the ulster final we could do well.

as for the seniors. I felt no body from Cavan in the crowd really believed we could do it and we were right. Very dissappointed with McDonald. Ok he is young and hopefully he will improve but he was completely out of it. Mulvey gave away possession quite a few times while he was on and is not a viable alternative. It is a major problem. When you have no midfield you are not going to win anything. Also to see the three full forwards bunched together in front of the armagh goal was stupid. I dont know what the thinking was there. martin Reilly seemed to lose his nerve in the second half and couldn't handle the ball at all. Johnstone showed what he can do if given decent ball although sometimes he lacked support and ended up surrounded. I think hannon should have been moved off stevie Mc . He was behind him every single time. Well Done to James reilly on another outstanding performance.

What about that point that seemed to have been "saved" from behing the crossbar. Did they show that on TV I would like to see that again. It looked like Armagh goalie put his hand up and pushed the ball back from behind the crossbar. He must have put his hand through the net or pushed it up. whatever it looked like it was a point. of course the umpires didn't see anything unusual. Anyway we were at least 6 points worse than Armagh. No possesion at midfield and wrong tactics in the forwards. plus no tight marking at the back.

s goldrick (Cavan) - Posts: 5522 - 17/06/2008 03:11:23    33608

Tom, your attitude towards Junior players is part of the problem with Cavan football. Teams in the "top" divisions (1&2) think they are better players than Junior players. Yes, they are better TEAMS because they have 15 average players but there are some exceptional Junior players playing in teams that have only 7 or 8 good players. If there was a transfer market these players would be snapped up (thankfully there is not). You cant dismiss a player just because his club is unable to put out a good 14 beside him. If we had McKenna from Kill (Div 3 midfielder) on Sunday? Finally, what was the sense in taking off McDonald and then puting him back on. If he wasn't good enough in the first 20 mins how was he going to be any better in the last 15. Did they have a go at hypnotising him or force Poweraid down his throat? Cunningham deserved a run, he had a good game v Armagh in the league. He would have at least thrown his weight around. It looked like we had put out under 16's in an U-21 game.

padraig (Cavan) - Posts: 19 - 17/06/2008 10:09:44    33674

bottom line.... donal is not a bad manager, clueless to think anyone can change that team round form 26 rated county in ireland to a team who can defeat a team who are very seriously eyeing up sam in a sgort space of time. yes he has done things wrong but he did not single handledy lose the game on the line... the fact of the matter is any manager in ireland would have lined out Cavan very similarly on sunday, now can anyone honestly disagree with that???
dermot is not finished... obviously he is not the player he was, but he is still a step ahead of alot of what we have(not for the full 70 though)
it is so easy for people to come on this site and knock players and management, i know lads get frustrated but it is the repeat offenders that annoy me... grow up and get behind yer county for once!!

milhouse (Cavan) - Posts: 469 - 17/06/2008 13:22:37    33787

Well Millhouse we are all obviously passionaite about football in cavan but i do have to admit there needs to b changes in the current set up for Cavan football to go forward, everyone on this site behind cavan, but their current set up is a bit of a joke.
There are players in the county who should have been playing on sunday but weren't so i reckon mickey graham and his minor set up seem to going in the right direction if we could have something similiar,
By the way managing a team is not about picking a team, its about man management, motivating players and the team and instilling confidence and developing younger players.

D_Dude (Cavan) - Posts: 360 - 17/06/2008 16:05:30    33923

Millhouse - disagree fundamentally. The game on Sunday was lost on the line. Armagh were no great shakes, a difficult team to beat but they are not anywhere near the team they were. Bringing on Mulvey and bringing Big Dermot out to midfield after 20 minutes showed a man who was in panic mode. At the time Armagh were 0-05 to 0-03 ahead with Johnstone about to take a free to bring it back to 0-05 to 0-04. For all their possession Armagh were not able to pull away. What was needed then was cool heads - they all talk about passion but it's the cool head who is able to respond to what is going on on the field who will win Championship games. If he had pulled Johnstone out to the half-forward line or pulled Jayo out to give Johnstone some space you could see some logic in his decisions. The last thing was needed was panic. Mulvey should have been held back until the last 15 minutes when Armagh were tiring and when he could make an impact - we all know he's not the most mobile and, injury or not, was never going to last for 50 minutes in Championship football. These types of decision have been going on all this year

opa01 (Cavan) - Posts: 540 - 17/06/2008 17:56:56    34013

Well Milhouse you make a very good point, Donal Keogan and his staff did well with poor players.
Look what we have got, only Reilly stood out above the others.
Donal ios without stars from the big feeder clubs, like Ramour Cavan Gaels Kingscourt and Gowna.
These teams in t6he past provided the big men of Cavan teams.
No disrespect to people from these clubs on Cavan teams at present.
But in the past the Big team men stood out

tomsmith (Cavan) - Posts: 4086 - 17/06/2008 19:17:05    34041

I could not criticise James Reilly for his shot stopping as two of his saves were as good as you will see all summer and they contributed big time to a flattering scoreline. One does have to ask though who instructed him to keep pumping high kick outs right down the middle of the park. Made Paul McGrane look legendary and our smaller midfielders just couldn't compete. Surely the sideline can see this happening and try something different.

Also how many times did an Armagh player execute the near hand tackle and slap a ball out of a Cavan players hands. It was hard to credit that at Senior level guys did not have the strenght or nous to know what was coming and hold on. As anArmagh man said beside me "Men against boys".

For as great as we rave about Seanie Johnston it would be advisabel for him to study the performance of Stevie McDonnell. His display of work to win ball and taking on his man was top class. Seanie in the first half was right in front of us and was sulking like a school boy and then started giving lip to some of his team mates. Less lip and more work makes a player great.

I think 4 points flattered us on Sunday as Armagh looked to have a different gear to move into when needed. It was made easy for them with the policy of crowding the edge of the square with our forwards. What a dream for Bellew and Mallon to know they didnt have to run too far to stick a hand in and rob easy ball.

New ideas needed fast as for me the most disappointing aspect and concern is that the Cavan crowd sounded downbeat and a lot less vocal than we were. Understandable as to why this is but I found it disappointing that Armagh got a far bigger cheer back onto the pitch after half time than we did.

The qualifiers this year are going to be tough with teams like Tyrone, Meath, Donegal waiting in there for us. I wouldn't even fancy us against Louth at this stage and they only turned up for the first half in Croke Park.

A big strong individual like Joe Kernan needed to rattle a few cages and be given time to put his plan in place. We are Division 3 grade and looked it Sunday. Sad times!!

breifneblue (Cavan) - Posts: 58 - 18/06/2008 07:27:04    34127