By Niall Gartland

RAMOR joint-manager Raymond Cole hopes they can rubberstamp their place in the Cavan Senior Championship quarter-finals with victory over Shercock this weekend, but he doesn’t expect anything easy after their close-fought encounter last year.

On that occasion, the Virginia side clinched a 1-9 to 0-10 victory over Shercock, but they’ll still be confident of qualifying for the quarters one game ahead of schedule after an opening day win over Crosserlough and a draw with Ballinagh.

Cole, who manages the side with Shane McInerney, says it’s important to the team that they don’t leave it to the fourth and final round of group matches.

“If we can win against Shercock, which is going to be a very tough game for us as they’re defensive and well organised, that’ll leave us comfortably through, and then we’d be able to rest key men in the following game.

“We had them last year as well and we won by two points. It’s going to be a dogged affair but that’s the way it is.”

Ramor have done well so far in this year’s championship, especially as Simon Cadden, Cavan sub goalie Liam Brady, and important midfielder Killian Maguire aren’t expected back for a couple of weeks.

Cole said: “We’d a good win against Crosserlough on the first day and it was easy getting lads up for that game. It was a good game and we won by a point in the end. It could’ve gone either way. We played Ballinagh on Sunday, we were leading most of the game and were up by six points at one stage.

“We let them back into it a couple of times and they got a point to draw it right at the death. We were still happy with the draw. We’re going ok. We have a few injuries and boys only coming back now so hopefully we’ll be at full strength in the next two or three weeks.”

The Cavan senior championship is usually a competitive affair with a bunch of teams expecting to go far in the competition. Gowna, who are managed by Fintan Reilly and Dermot McCabe, are playing really well at present, but there’s a lot of teams with serious pretensions of going all the way to the final.

“Castlerahan have been beaten twice. Crosserlough lost their first game then drew with the Gaels. Gowna seem to be the form team at the moment. They’ve won their two games comfortably enough, and Kingscourt have won their two games as well. It’s wide open. There’s five or six teams who could go the whole way.”