By Niall Gartland

BROTHERS Jude and Pat McNabb are in charge of Cavan club Ramor this year, and while it’s early days, so far things have been going according to plan for the natives of Trillick in County Tyrone.

Pat McNabb was joint-manager of the Omagh CBS team that won last year’s MacRory and Hogan Cup double before stepping aside to look after the age group that just the other month won the Oisin McGrath title.

His brother Jude played with Trillick in his youth but these days he lives in Drogheda and he’s been involved with various clubs in Meath, most recently with Oldcastle whom he steered to an Intermediate final appearance in 2021.

The sibling duo have joined forces at Ramor and the results have been very positive to date, winning four of their five Division One matches thus far.

Explaining how they came to manage Ramor, Pat McNabb said: “Jude took his lad Fiachra from U-6 up to minors at St Colmcille’s and they won five Grade One underage titles in a row so I suppose he got the taste for coaching.

“He got involved with Simonstown, then more recently Oldcastle and I’d have gone down on occasion to give him a hand.

“We spoke about pulling our resources together but we were realistically limited to clubs around Cavan and Monaghan, and the Ramor oppportunity came up so we decided to give it a go.”

The McNabbs aren’t the only Tyrone men on board at a high-profile Cavan club this year with Stephen ‘Archie’ Beattie and Ryan Daly assuming the reins at Crosserlough, who were rocked by the news this week that star forward Paddy Lynch has done his cruciate.

Other teams with significant aspirations of doing well include, obviously, back-to-back champions Gowna, Kingscourt and Cavan Gaels, and Pat McNabb isn’t getting too carried away with Ramor’s impressive run of results so early in the campaign.

“It’s a bit of a transitional period for us. A couple of our main forwards aren’t available, Sean McEvoy is on a soccer scholarship in America, James Brady did his cruciate and then moved to Australia, and Laurence Caffrey is pursuing a basketball career.

“A couple of other boys have stepped aside so we’re trying to incorporate a few younger boys into the squad. We’ve done well in our league games but we’re yet to play some of the big guns – we’ve Kingscourt this weekend and we still have to play the likes of Gowna and Crosserlough.

“We’re mindful there’s tougher challenges ahead, we’re still trying to get to know the boys and we’re using the league to try out as many players as possible.”