O’Reilly: Relegation could be on cards

By Niall Gartland

CAVAN legend Damien O’Reilly fears that relegation already looks like a distinct possibility after the worst possible start to the Breffni County’s Division Two campaign.

Back-to-back defeats at the hand of Monaghan and Meath means that Cavan are stuck to the bottom of the table with nothing to show for their efforts ahead of Sunday’s home tie against Louth.

It already looks like a must-win game with tough-sounding encounters against Cork, Roscommon and Down coming down the tracks, and O’Reilly, a star of Cavan footballer in the eighties and nineties, isn’t feeling overly optimistic at present.

“Division Two is very competitive, you have strong teams down from Division One and very hungry teams coming up from Division Three, I knew it was going to be difficult.

“But I was hoping that we’d pick up at least one win from our opening two matches, then you’d be eyeing up a win against Westmeath and hoping to pick up another two points elsewhere.

“That hasn’t happened and it won’t be easy to get anything from the Louth match, it seems to be a bit of a struggle for Cavan at the minute.”

On the R-word, he said: “Relegation does look to be on the cards, and the reason I say that is that we have some really difficult games ahead of us. There’s Cork and Roscommon, and Down as well – they beat us last year and seem to be on the opposite trajectory as us.”

Paul Fitzpatrick, sports editor of local paper The Anglo Celt, wrote a column last week arguing that the Cavan senior footballers are set to go into a “sharp decline” and that “it’s now too late to avoid it.” They have a stuttering underage system and O’Reilly thinks there’s too much reliance on the elder heads who backboned their 2020 Ulster title triumph.

“At some stage there has to be a transition – the experienced lads are obviously important to the group, but there’s maybe been an over-reliance on them down the years.

“To be fair, Raymond Galligan is trying to add in a few new fellas, Darragh Lovett for example had a good game against Meath, but more of them need to be integrated.

“I think supporters would actually back off the team a little if they did bring in a batch of new fellas who were given the opportunity to establish themselves as inter-county footballers.”

Nor is O’Reilly convinced that the new rules are doing the team any favours, though it isn’t all doom and gloom and returnee Gearóid McKiernan kicked three two-pointers when sprung from the bench against Meath

“On the whole, they don’t seem to suit us. We’ve been quite defensive and lateral in recent years and a lot of our players have been accustomed to that style of play. It’ll take us a while to get away from that method of play.”