Cavan’s Brady finds a way to cope with busy schedule

By Niall Gartland

IT’S been a hectic couple of years for Cavan joint-skipper Ciarán Brady, but he’s happy to acknowledge that he’s in fine fettle ahead of Sunday’s Ulster Championship quarter-final showdown against Tyrone.

Split season be damned, Brady has had little down-time since his club Arva embarked on an incredible championship run spanning two full seasons.

Brady skippered Arva to All-Ireland Junior glory in January 2024 with a memorable Croke Park victory over Kerry side Listowel.

And there would be no metaphorical year off. They excelled in their first year back up at Intermediate level, making it all the way to another provincial final where they fell just short in a high quality contest against Ballinderry.

In between times, the 30-year-old primary school teacher has been a central figure in county colours, so it’s been a busy spell and he’s glad that his life circumstances have aligned to facilitate his juggling act.

“It’s a great complaint to have I suppose. It’s been a long two or three seasons, but I’m in my prime and the years might be numbered ahead of me so I’m just taking it game-by-game and thankfully the body keeps on saying yes to the games and I’m not picking up any knocks so it’s great.

“I’m lucky I’m working and living locally in Cavan town, I know it’d be a lot different for people in Dublin and I see that around me, it can be tough going.

“If you’re trying to win games at a high level, you have to devote an awful lot of time to it, and although it’s a split-season, I don’t see a rest period for any county player going to the club. I’m just lucky that living and working in Cavan town offers me that time to place Cavan high up on the priority list.”

While Cavan took Tyrone to extra-time at the same juncture this time last year, and while they were only a whisker away from promotion to the top flight more recently, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that their stock has fallen since hitting the heights of a long-awaited Ulster Championship title in 2020.

Perhaps, Brady argues in hindsight, a downturn in fortunes was inevitable.

“The other way of looking at it, is that 2020 was the end of something. We brought Tyrone to a replay in 2016, the same with Armagh in 2018, got to an Ulster final in 2019 then one it in 2020.

“Another thing is that the Ulster Championship couldn’t be any more competitive than it is. You look at Derry, Tyrone, Donegal, Armagh, every single team has their house in order across the board.

“We’ve had our ups and downs but I think everyone has them in sport. I think at times we haven’t been consistent, but I think we’re showing good signs again that maybe we’re on an upwards trajectory.”

Cavan and Tyrone’s league formlines were fairly similar in that they overcame a sticky patch to pick up a head of steam heading into the championship. The Red Hands were still relegated in the final end-up, while Cavan’s promotion tilt fell a fraction short, but both teams will be inwardly confident of a productive championship campaign.

Brady said: “We had a slow start to the league, maybe it took us a while to get to grips with the new rules, but when we did, we gained a bit of momentum.

“We’d four straight wins on the bounce, and yes we were beaten by a better Cork team on the day in the final round, but all in all we’re happy enough with the league and how it went, there’s a lot of positives to be taken heading into the championship.”

On Tyrone, he offered: “We’re a good battle with them last year and we’ve had three weeks to prepare for them again. They’d a very strong end of the league albeit they got relegated.

“They were missing the Errigal lads for the early stage of the league and the likes of Peter Harte and the Canavans would be a massive miss to any team in the country. Tyrone will be hard to push over, they finished the league very strongly and we’ll be under no illusions about the size of the task ahead of us.”

The game is less stop-start under the new rules and high fitness levels are even more of a prerequisite, but Brady thinks it’ll be manageable, particularly with more free weekends during championship season.

“It’s probably a different type of fitness – if you’re a versatile player around the middle eight, it’s probably more constant. All in all I think the GPS stats might be up a percent or two but in the grand scale of things it’s not really huge.

“Intercounty players are training ferociously hard during the league and maybe at the start of the league there were a few hamstring injuries, and it was suggested in the media that it was the new rules taking their toll.

“But now with the championship approaching and maybe two weeks before every game, I think bodies will have time to recover and recuperate and hopefully it’ll be alright.”