Castlerahan turn their focus to championship

By Niall Gartland

CASTLERAHAN manager Fergal Flanagan won’t make any grand proclamations about their looming championship campaign for the simple reason that they don’t know who they’ll be playing as they move through the group stages.

They take on Killygarry on their first day out this weekend so they’ve a fair idea of what’s laying in store but after that it’s very much in the lap of the Gods so Flanagan will take it step by step and game by game.

For the uninitiated, Flanagan played on the Castlerahan team that participated in five senior championship finals in-a-row between 2015 and 2019, losing out in 2015, 2016 (after a replay) and 2017 before winning their first ever senior title in 2018 and repeating the trick in 2019.

It couldn’t last forever and they dropped out of the senior grade for a short spell, but they have some talented younger players coming through their ranks so Flanagan, who stepped in as manager in the middle of last year’s championship campaign, is cautiously positive about the road ahead.

“We’re going through a period of transition – we got relegated in 2021 and bounced straight back up in 2022, which was a relief.

“In the last couple of years, it’s been about trying to stay up in the senior championship, and we’ve bled a lot of youth with a few of the older guys moving on.

“We’re trying to keep everyone together while building for the future. The lads know it’s not going to happen overnight but we’re working hard and want to stay at the top level in Cavan.”

“We still have about seven or eight members of our championship winning teams but we have lost a lot of quality, the likes of Ronan Flanagan (Fergal’s brother), Sean Brady, Cian Mackey who has transferred away, but we still have a core group who are still there and setting a good example to the younger lads.”

Castlerahan wrapped up their Division One campaign in recent weeks with a play-off victory over Knockbride, ensuring they’ll play top-flight football in Division One. They take on Killygarry in the first round, and they’ll need to be on their guard against a team that played in the senior final as recently as two years ago. Not only that, but the Division Two outfit were in a rich vein of form before a surprise promotion play-off defeat to Ballinagh.

“They’re a really good team and they went the whole league campaign unbeaten, but the way our system is, finishing top doesn’t guarantee promotion and they got caught by Ballinagh in the semis.

“They have serious quality in their ranks, the likes of Darragh Lovett, Oisin Brady, Cian Reilly, Conor Smith and Martin Reilly. They’ll be favourites and rightly so but we’ll give the best account of ourselves possible.”

Castlerahan will hope to get their championship campaign off to a winning start but even if they pick up the points, it’s no guarantee of anything as they could potentially be pitted against the favourites for the championship title in the coming weeks.

Flanagan said: “It can be hard to predict what kind of championship you’ll have, you could be very unfortunate, we could have Ramor, Crosserlough and Gowna as our three games after this. It all depends on the draw, whereas in the past you’d know your four teams and I could tell you from the start whether we’ve a good chance of making a quarter-final or whether we’ll be under serious pressure.”