O’Hanlon expecting a tight clash with Down

By Michael McMullan

CAVAN manager Ed O’Hanlon is expecting a tough encounter when Down come to Kingspan Breffni for Saturday afternoon’s Ulster minor quarter-final.

Victory over Derry shot Cavan into the winners’ half of the draw where they failed to take their chances against Tyrone last weekend. Now, they’ve no more chances. It’s all or nothing.

“We performed pretty well,” O’Hanlon said of their 0-19 to 0-13 defeat in O’Neill’s Healy Park. “Tyrone look like the sort of standout team in the province and we weren’t just a mile off them now at the weekend.”

Cavan have been dealt a difficult hand with injuries and O’Hanlon also points to Down’s form in the competition.

From their own point of view, they’ve improved since being hit by four Tyrone goals in the league semi-final earlier in the season.

“We would have been fairly disappointed with our performance, We lost by 11 points in the end that day,” added O’Hanlon, who pointed to the concession of goals coming off the back of their own mistakes.

“At the weekend, Tyrone didn’t really get a shot at our goal at all whereas we had a number of goal opportunities that we weren’t willing to take.

“We’ve closed the gap a little bit anyway in the intervening weeks and so that’s a positive from our point of view.”

O’Hanlon was heartened by their championship win over Derry when they held the Oakleafers scoreless for the final 22 minutes and brought more to the second half themselves.

“We were delighted to beat Derry,” he said. “Cavan don’t have a brilliant record of beating Derry over the years.

“That was a strong Derry team, I’d say they’d be devastated after the weekend,” he added, referencing Down’s late winning goal to knock the champions out.

“We were obviously pleased with the way we saw it out,” O’Hanlon said of their own performance against Derry, using the wind after half-time.

“To be honest, from our point of view, the longer the game went on, the more composed our guys were becoming, so it was very pleasing.”

That’s in the past. Their improvement between both Tyrone games has also being parked. Saturday is knock-out football.

“It’s a very short turnaround,” O’Hanlon added. “We’ve looked at the tape of Down and they look like they have a lot of good footballers all over the field.

“They’ve a few big strong guys, like Danny Doyle in the middle of the field and right up the right up the spine of their team and lots of ballers.

“All eyes are on Down then. We’re going to have a huge game against them, to be honest, this Saturday. There’ll probably be the kick of a ball in it when the final whistle goes, one way or the other.”