By Niall Gartland

THESE are heady days for the Cavan ladies, who recently clinched promotion to Division One football for the first time ever.

This Sunday, they’ll aim to cap it all off with the league title when they take on Donegal at Clones.

Leading the team out will be captain Shauna Lynch, part of a small band of vastly experienced heads on the panel who have dovetailed with players who have won all around them at underage level.

Last year’s Division Three title marked Lynch’s first ever silverware after more than a decade at the coalface, and clinching back-to-back promotions says it all about their rate of progression.

“You can see how we’re progressing – we’re winning hard games, grinding out wins and holding onto leads that we might not have kept years ago.To get promoted to Division One that day up in Tyrone for the first time ever was huge,” said Lynch.

“Back when I first started, we would’ve made two or three league finals, but only one team was promoted back then. All the pressure was on the final day, whereas now both teams go up, which takes a bit of the pressure off.”

As Lynch notes, there’s no real pressure involved with Sunday’s final, but both teams will still be hell bent on finishing the league in style. Cavan edged a low-scoring group stage tussle against Donegal by a smattering of points, and she’s mindful that Donegal have a point to prove this weekend.

Lynch, who has recently recovered from a serious calf injury, said: “I’m sure they are [out for revenge]. It was a funny game, I was on the sideline for it, and it kind of passed everyone by. It was great, obviously, to get the win and the points. But you learn more from the games you lose and play badly in than from constantly winning and not being tested, so I’m sure they’ll have learned a lot from that game.”

Cavan’s young guns are accustomed to success but it’s a different dynamic with long-serving players like Sinead Greene and Aisling Sheridan, not to mention Lynch herself.

“They’re so used to winning, which is unbelievable. They’ve won with schools and county, and then there’s the likes of myself – our league title last year was the first bit of silverware in my Cavan career. Then getting promoted two weeks ago was just class. A few of us celebrated, because I think things like that need to be celebrated.”