Mickey Graham keen to focus on positives

Mon, 24 Jun, 2019 - 05:00

Brendan O'Brien

For Cavan, the wait goes on.

They would have suspected as much very soon after yesterday’s throw-in when a fortnight of anticipation was undone in the space of a handful of minutes that taught them just how far they have still to travel to live with the Donegals of this world.

Mickey Graham wasn’t about to make any definitive calls on where it went wrong but he gave short

thrift

shrift to the suggestion that his side had suffered with the enormity of the occasion without denying the nature of the slow start itself.

“A lot of things we talked about didn’t happen for us today,” said the Cavan manager. “Especially in the first-half. We got turned over at times and, against a team like Donegal, they counter-attack and you are going to get punished, every single time. That’s what happened.

We got turned over in the tackle, we kicked a few wides, gave away ball, dropped it short and it was all our doing and Donegal made it count at the other end. That was one thing you can’t do against Donegal as they have so many runners all over the field and they punished us for that.

Cavan just had no answer to Donegal’s massed defence and searing ability to do damage on the break: all of it buttressed by a midfield that bossed vast sections of the afternoon from kick-outs. That they went down by just five points was, not to be condescending, a victory in itself.

Scoring 2-11 after the interval — on top of just five points before it — is the sort of response that they can use heading towards the All-Ireland qualifiers and

Mackey

Graham wasn’t slow to hold on to such slivers of comfort.

“They showed great character. That is the one thing that we have shown all year: we went for games. At (half-time) people were probably saying, ‘what is going to happen in the second half?’. But the lads kept going and going and you couldn’t fault their effort. There were times when we could have picked off another few scores. It didn’t happen.

“But you have to be seriously proud of every one of them. They realised the position we were in at half-time. Their first time in 18 years.

“And, as I said to them, you don’t realise when you will get this chance again. Just go down fighting whatever you do anyway. Do not go into a shell and retreat and throw in the towel. And they definitely didn’t do that anyhow.”