O’Keeffe embracing Cavan’s camogie return

By Michael McMullan

AN All-Ireland title wasn’t on the radar at the turn of the year, but a buoyant Cavan now find themselves in Saturday’s All-Ireland Premier Junior Championship semi-final against Kildare at Tullamore.

After losing the 2024 semi-final at the hands of Laois, Cavan didn’t field a team at senior intercounty level until they returned for this year’s Ulster Intermediate Championship clash with Tyrone.

Now they find themselves one spot away from a place in the All-Ireland final – and captain Róisin O’Keeffe almost finds it hard to believe that they’ve reached this point.

“If you had told all of us girls in January and February time that we’d be in an All-Ireland semi-final for camogie, we probably would have laughed at you.

“It’s great and it has been a whirlwind year. We struggled to get a team together at the start, there just didn’t seem to be the commitment there. There was a small group of girls.”

Manager Philip Brady floated the idea again in March about getting the band back together.

And since making a memorable return in the Ulster Championship, Cavan were then entered in the All-Ireland, taking the place of the ‘bye’ team in the already set fixture plans.

After winning all three group games, they topped the section to leave them playing fourth placed Kildare this weekend with the prize of an All-Ireland final up for grabs.

Niamh Keenaghan is the only dual county player but virtually the entire camogie team play club football.

Their camogie training was factored in around club football games with enough give and take to allow both to co-exist.

“With commitment it is hard but it’s great to have the team back,” O’Keeffe said.

“There are a lot of us that didn’t want to see Cavan camogie not field a senior team and two years has been long enough.

“It’s great to be back and hopefully this will push it on now,” she added.

“It’s not only about this year; there are a lot of younger girls that have come in this year.

“We’re hoping that they will be the leaders now, that they’ll take something from this and they’ll push it on over the next few years.”

Roscommon and Armagh are meeting for a fourth time this weekend in the other semi-final.

New venture

From Cavan’s point of view, there isn’t the same level of familiarity with their opponents. Stepping into the All-Ireland series was a venture into the unknown.

Aside from a challenge game, their Ulster Intermediate final clash with Tyrone was all that had to go on.

“The other teams didn’t really know what we were about either,” O’Keeffe also points out.

“It definitely was a learning curve, but the top four teams left, there’s absolutely nothing between us.

“We’ve played Kildare already and we really had to dig deep that day to get the win.

“They were on top for the whole of the first half but we lifted things and we got a bit of momentum.

“Anyone that was at that game definitely would have felt we are very two evenly matched teams.

“We said that the league campaign (All-Ireland group stage) would be where we learn an awful lot about ourselves.

“In fairness, we’ve took every game and probably learnt an awful lot from different things from each of them.”