Cavan and O’Keeffe chuffed to land Ulster crown

By Shaun Casey

THE celebrations were “tame” after capturing the Ulster Intermediate title says Cavan’s Roisin O’Keeffe, but getting their hands on the silverware was all that mattered at Kingspan Breffni Park last Sunday.

Tyrone flew out of the blocks and registered the first four points of the day, but the Breffni Blues responded brilliantly.

A first half goal from player of the match Shanise Fitzsimons was the key to victory, putting Philip Brady’s girls three points ahead at half time, 1-7 to 0-7 and they pushed on in the second half to eventually win by five.

“Any time that you lift silverware, it’s important to go out and celebrate it as a group,” said O’Keeffe, who scored two-points in their 1-15 to 1-10 triumph.

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“We got together after for food and had a few drinks. It was quite tame, but it was nice to get the whole group together after the game because we were going into the unknown.”

Sunday was Cavan’s first competitive outing of the season, perhaps accounting for their slow start to the game. The Red Hands had four Division 3A league games under their belt and picked up two victories. Given that fact, Cavan started the contest as the pre-match underdogs, the team weren’t too concerned about that.

“We were late rebuilding the team, so we had missed the whole league campaign,” O’Keeffe explained.

“We hadn’t played any actual competitive games beforehand and obviously Tyrone had gone through their league campaign and done quite well in it. That probably meant that Tyrone were going in as favourites.

“We didn’t really look into the whole favourites and underdogs thing. It was more that we wanted to see where we were at because we hadn’t played a competitive game all year.

“Although it was an Ulster final and any day there’s a cup or some silverware on the line, you try to win it, but for us it was definitely more to see where we were at.

“Tyrone definitely started the game as the better team. They went four up inside the first 10 minutes before we to the pace of the game and got up to the physicality of it.

“When we started to chip over a few scores after that initial 10-minute period, you could see the whole team started to relax and started to play.

“We got that goal just before half time and that definitely really settled us. It added to the belief in our changing room that we were in a really good spot and we were in with chance of pushing on and trying to win the game.”