By Ronan Scott

Ulster u-20 championship semi-final
Cavan v Tyrone
Saturday, Clones, 2.45pm

Ahead of this weekend’s Ulster u-20 championship semi-final, Cavan manager John Brady has backed his team to give Tyrone a serious test.

The Red Hands won the league title a few weeks ago, and will be favoured to win this game.

But Brady believes that his group of players have the atttitude to really test Tyrone.

“They are a good bunch of lads. They will not give up. They will keep going to the very end.”

Brady knows the team very well as he coached most of them when he was minor manager in 2017 and 2018.

“They have grown since then through strength and conditioning. They have got stronger physicall, and they matured as players as well.”

Cavan proved that they have the hunger to win when they beat Monaghan by 1-13 to 2-4 in last weekend’s quarter-final.

“We were happy to get over the line,” Brady said.

“We knew Monaghan were going to be tough.

“We always knew they were going to throw up a challenge.”

Brady said that the game panned out as they expected. They knew how Monaghan would set up and they played accordingly.

“We attacked them from the get go. It seemed to work well. I wouldn’t be happy about the two goals. They got one before half time and one after half time.

They were bad blows.”

However, Brady knows that his team have to step up their performances.

“Down beat us by six in the league, and Tyrone beat them. We are going to have to step up.

“Tyrone were favourites to win this championship before it all started.”

Cavan took the positives from their league run. They reached the final of the B competition, where they lost to Down by 1-14 to 0-11.

“We did the league the right way. We went out to try to win every game. We were beat in the final.

“Tyrone won their league. So they will be up to speed. We will look at their game and try to work out a plan.”

What would it mean to these players to get to the final?

“It would be great to get to an Ulster final. But it will be tough. Tyrone have been doing a lot of work at underage level and they beat us in an u-17 final a few years ago. That team went on to win an All-Ireland title. A lot of those players are back.”

r.scott@gaeliclife.com