St Paul’s Minor Football Tournament quarter-final

Drumloman Gaels v Lavey

Saturday, Colaiste Feirste, 4pm

CAVAN fans could probably do with a reminder that they have the talent in the county to compete with the best elsewhere, so the onus is on Drumloman Gaels to leave some sort of imprint in the Ulster Minor Tournament.

Castlerahan have failed to make an impact in the Ulster Senior Championship in the last two years, while Cavan Gaels are the only team from the county to ever win the famous St Paul’s tournament, all the way back in 1999. It makes for grim enough reading from a Cavan perspective, and Drumloman Gaels – an amalgamation of Mullahoran and Ballymachugh – will do well to compete with star-studded Derry team Lavey in this Saturday’s quarter-final clash.

It’s the first year they’ve ever been in the competition (not that surprising; the amalgamation started four years ago) and joint-manager Gerry McGeogh knows it won’t be easy.

“Lavey are probably the favourites for the competition so we’re not looking any further than that. We know they’re good and we’ll have to lift our game if we’re to overcome them. We don’t know much about them, we know about the Downeys and we’ll have to hold their forward line if we’re to have any chance.”

Drumlowan Gaels have had to wait a few months for this match – they won the U17 Championship final in mid-October with a fantastic comeback victory over Killygarry. They were trailing by six points heading into the final ten minutes but produced a stirring comeback to win out by 0-17 to 1-12, with the likes of Cormac McKeogh, Matthew McGahern and Shane Tynan, who had to go off injured near the end, producing the goods in front of the posts, while Caolan O’Reilly was awarded the man of the match award for his heroic efforts.

The team has done very well generally in recent years, winning U-16 and U-17 titles, so while the amalgmation wasn’t universally popular at the time, it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t been to the benefit of both clubs.

“It was very important to us to keep the ones who want to play football together, and the amalgamation is important for that reason alone. It was very important with the players themselves, outside of that there were people for and against is but that’s to be expected.”

McKeogh, a Mullahoran man himself, said: “We have a number of players playing for the senior team of both Mullahoran and Ballymachugh already so the future will hopefully be positive.”