McNabb expects a close contest as Breffni decider takes on Tyrone tinge

By Niall Gartland

THERE’S a prominent Tyrone theme running through Sunday’s Cavan Senior Championship final between Ramor and Crosserlough.

Crosserlough are led on the line by two Tyrone natives – Carrickmore’s Ryan Daly and Eskra man Stephen ‘Archie’ Beattie. Daly managed Carrickmore to a Tyrone Senior Championship final appearance in 2022, where they lost narrowly to Errigal Ciaran, and ‘Archie’ was part of his backroom. Now they’ve headed to the Breffni County and they’re doing a fine job.

Then Ramor are managed by Trillick brothers Jude and Pat McNabb. Jude is Meath-based and has accrued a considerable amount of managerial experience in recent years, while Pat, a teacher at Omagh CBS, was an integral part of the management set-up that led the school to the 2023 MacRory and Hogan Cup double.

Speaking ahead of the final, Pat commented: “It’s an all-Tyrone sideline effectively, who’d have predicted that at the start of the year? Ryan and ‘Archie’ have recent experience of a county final, having lost one with Carrickmore, and I’m sure they’ll be looking to put their own wee personal record right.

“I know they’ve done an awful lot of work with Crosserlough, they have them well-organised and they’ve hit on average 2-20 per game in the championship. The two teams are finely matched going into the final and it has the makings of a really good game of football.”

Ramor have won two senior championship titles in the last decade – in 2016 and 2021 – but they’ve been absent from county final day in the last couple of years. The McNabbs came on board this season and have done a fine job, leading the group to their first Division One title in nearly three decades.

They beat Gown that day, and they repeated the trick in their championship semi-final, halting the march of the back-to-back senior champions in a gripping match. Curiously, they haven’t lost a single game to Gowna since 2009.

Pat McNabb said: “I hadn’t realised that until the week before the game. Statistically. Gowna haven’t beaten Ramor since 2009 in any game of football whatsoever, league or championship. It’s an amazing statistic. When myself and Jude took over Ramor, we started researching Gowna as they’ve been setting really high standards and we wanted to find out more about that.

“We got to know them quite well from our research and watching them. They’re a very good team and blessed with a lot of good players. I suppose, in hindsight, we got them at the right time – I feel that if they got to the final they’d have been hard to stop.

“They’d come through a league format where they stuttered through it, as they’d done in previous years, but they’ve this tendency to find their feet and once they get to the final, they know how to look after it, so to get them in a quarter or a semi was an ideal time.”

Opponents Crosserlough have been racking up big scores while Ramor have been mostly associated with defensive solidity.

That said, they played some really good attacking football in their hard-fought victory over Gowna, and that should set them in good stead for the final.

“It was pleasing, it’s our attack that’s the one area we’ve had to spend a lot of time on. From the 2021 team, Sean McEvoy is away in America and James Brady has been out of the team effectively for two years. He came back but got his jaw broken so is gone again.

“The team has been down those talked-about players of 2021 so we’ve had to spend a lot of time working on it. To be honest there’s no winning formula, we haven’t always got it right, but we got four early points against Gowna and that gave us a really good platform to go on and win the game.”