By Michael McMullan

CAVAN are planning without injured duo Conor Casey and Evan Crowe ahead of Sunday’s visit of Dublin to Kingspan Breffni Park.

Crowe was forced off injured in their defeat against Westmeath and manager Dermot McCabe said his own clubmate Conor Casey is recovering from injury.

The Gowna man was called into the panel after impressing on the club scene and it was his two-pointer that saw Cavan force extra-time against Westmeath.

Based on his impact, Casey will be a huge loss to Cavan. It comes on the back of injuries to Gearóid McKiernan, Jason McLoughlin and Oisin Brady, who excelled during the league.

“Evan Crowe picked up a terrible injury to his eye socket and to his sinus bone,” McCabe said of the injury in their extra-time game in Mullingar.Speaking to Gaelic Life last week, the Cavan boss confirmed Crowe was due to have surgery and that Casey was on the injured list.

“Conor Casey, who was new and making a big impact, has picked up a fairly major injury from an impact last weekend (against Westmeath).

“Unfortunately, we’ve been hit with a lot of injuries,” McCabe added. “Sometimes I don’t like saying that and I don’t want to use that as an excuse. We’re working hard as a group here.”

Evan Crowe picked up an injury against Westmeath

Looking back on their defeat at the hands of Westmeath, McCabe felt it couldn’t be pinpointed to one key incident, but that instead the final outcome hinged on a combination of moments.

“When you have a game that’s so tight and a game that’s a draw, you can look at it all individually and say that that had an effect on the game,” he said.

“We expected to win the game, we wanted to win the game, and I think in the 70 minutes maybe we definitely did enough to win the game.

“I think we had as many and maybe more shots than Westmeath and we just didn’t convert them.

“With the hype and the crowd that was there, I suppose our initial aim was maybe to kill the crowd, and for the first 10 or 15 minutes we held on to the ball well,” McCabe added.

“We conceded a few turnovers which led to their scores, some of them turnovers. I would have felt that maybe our players’ arms were grabbed on the pass over.

“They got scores on those turnovers, that’s what Westmeath live off and they probably got a little bit of momentum there and got the crowd behind them, then all of a sudden you’re five or six points down.”

Unlucky

In their league campaign, Cavan were unlucky not to finish higher up the table, losing narrowly to the teams that were eventually promoted, Cork and Meath.

Their defeat to Westmeath leaves Cavan stepping into knock-out football this weekend against Dublin.

“It’s nice to get a home draw,” McCabe of Dublin’s visit. “It was very hard for our supporters to get tickets for last weekend (against Westmeath).

“We’ll be hoping that they will come out and give us the huge support. It definitely had an effect I think in a lot of 50-50 calls last week. If we could have a big cheer here it would be huge for us.

“Dublin are Dublin, I know that they are probably in a rebuilding phase, but when you start listing out some of the players they have, they have huge achievements and are still playing extremely well.

“It’s a very difficult game, but we’ll review them over the next seven or eight days as much as we possibly can, and be as best prepared to get a result.”

• Check out GaelicLife.com this week for more Cavan v Dublin buildup and all the coverage of the All-Ireland SFC.