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Welcome Homer!

I have to say I'm loving the huge Cavan presence on this board. I think for about two years I was the only Cavan man on here, it was fierce lonely altogether. Then a bloke called blue05 or something - blue something anyway - arrived and kept me company for a further year or so and then, bejasus, the floodgates opened and we have our own threads that never die and run to multiples of pages.

We don't win very much but our presence here shows the massive interest we have in the games and would put other counties to shame!

OK everyone fit, well and available come championship, here's my best team

1 Miller

2 Hannon
3 Rabbitt
4 Fannin

5 Brady
6 Forde
7 Gaynor

8 McKenna
9 walsh

10 Sean Brady
11 Lyng
12 McKeever

13 Jelly
14 McCabe
15 Pierson

With Larry and Jason as impact subs. If this team was fit and pumped up I think it's a serious outfit..

That's a pretty good shout at our best team alright. I'd swop Gaynor and Forde and that'd be about all I'd change.

There'd be question marks over Lyng's fitness though, and McKeever's commitment, while Pierson faded out of the picture a bit prematurely last year if I recall which looked a bit sus, I don't think he was injured.

Is Paddy Brady from Gowna knocking about, or John Tierney...I heard the latter was regaining some fitness but these stories go around all the time. Brady was a shocking disappointment in the senior shirt after years of stardom underage. Shame.

Miller will be a miss alright but there were signs his heart wasn't in it last year after his Allstar perfromances the year previously. What's encouraging though is that DK told him to hit the road if he couldn't give it 100%. McElkennon would have accommodated him.

Bit of a tanking in Laois by all accounts - does anyone know what the team was? I took a look at the Laois site but it made my eyes bleed...

What happened with Podge? Was there a family bereavement? Shame he can't come back in, a good defender.

ac39 - I'd imagine Dermo will still be giving lip to all comers, not just McKenna. Dermo's an equal opportunities harrassment officer, he leaves nobody out generally. I expect McKenna is ready for it and is thick-skinned enough at this stage.

As for Flanagan, I'd say he's getting enough football already, he'll still be college and U21 and senior for his club and already has had a few injuries I think. He's a bit slight yet too, I'd have him as a sub but Sean Brady is big enough and experienced enough to hold his own now. He's not an intercounty midfielder though he has more to offer making sniping passes from the half-forward line and getting on the end of attacks.

You described yourtself a page back as a pessimist/realist, so you clearly know quite well the fine line between either.

On the realism side of things , I share alot of your misgivings about our county board, current players, manager, history of underachievement, but it's after that where we diverge. Beyond there you seemingly see no reason for hope and vigilante-style smack down anyone who disagrees. It's just too easy to be cynical and wallow in self-fulfilling prophecies my friend, and it's this attitude that part-explains why those same underage teams you get so upset about never fulfilled their potential. When the fat is in the fire, no Cavan team believes in itself enough because we come from a county full of world-weary wise men who always know better and where the culture is "ah we were unlucky." We simply accept what's ingrained in us to think is our fate and cry when we lose by a point to an Ulster team in extra time because we haven't the balls to finish the job ourselves or are too content with the moral victory. One man changed it all temporarily and that was Martin McHugh and look what he was able to do.

It's up to you what your view is on life, football and so on, I can live and live let live with everyone but nothing will shake me from the view that there ARE always reasons to be positive about Cavan football and most fundamentally, if everyone involved simply adopts a grumble-groan woe-is-us approach then we're going to stay mired precisely where we are right now. None of which is to say that if we're all sunny-side-of-the street positive all the time, the opposite results will accrue, but put it this way - which one of the two offers you some hope of self-betterment, and which offers you none at all?

Didn't mean this to ramble on as much but you seem to have a bee in your bonnet over it - I was only slagging you earlier on you know. I have no problem with your view as long as you don't fight me to make me adapt it - I'm not doing that to you after all.

You know Maniac you're dead right, i've just reviewed the situation and don't know why I get this sense of utter fatalistic pessimism that I like to think of as realism in my misguided way. So I've just reviewed the situation and decided that on the basis of our current ranking at number 26 in senior football, our shedload of underage titles over the past several years, the outstanding performances of our clubs in Ulster and our dynamic, far seeing County board that, shag it, anything less than an Ulster Clean sweep at Minor, Under 21 and Senior level next year will be abject failure. And take it from me, the 2007 minors will be the best we've EVER produced, bar none.

You say tom-ay-toes, I say tomatoes. I knew you'd bite though...

Along with at least reaching an Ulster U21 final and giving it a right rattle, I'm with mylestheslasher. If you hang-doggedly accept that your fate is to achieve nothing then that's exactly what you'll achieve. I know what anglocelt39 will think of that but sure shoot for the stars and land on the moon or whatever, is what I think.

It's an awful shame about Crowe. f**king tank of a man. I think he agreed to join the county panel for a year as part of an agreement to help his club who were in severe disciplinary bother with the county board at the time. That's what was being said anyway, believe what you will.

McCabe's remaining contributions to Cavan will all come at 14 I think, he just doesn't have it around the middle any more unless he finds a new reserve of fitness or something and stays injury free. But we'll have to rob Peter to pay Paul in midfield at various times I'd say and move him back out as we won't have a good enough midfield in big games even with McKenna in there. I also wouldn't overstate McCabe's ability at 14, he destroyed Down there a few years ago and caused Derry a few flutters in Casement a few years previously, but has otherwise been a fairly blunt weapon on the edge of the square. His distribution out the field can be an asset too. Ho hum, swings and roundabouts.

If I was Keogan, I'd camp outside his door and haunt the guy until he gives in.

I hear Pearse McKenna is back on the Cavan panel, can anyone confirm? Encouraging news if so, he's no Jack O'Shea but has proven himself a very valuable and hard working memeber of the team in an area where we are always short on quality. Happy to have him back.

Having to travel to Meath - again - is disappointing but overallw e can be happy that we've got the other strong teams in the division all at home - Wexford, Sligo and what should be a plucky enough Wicklow.

Away to Tipp, Antrim and Waterford but if we're in any sort of shape at all, should be too difficult although Antrim might be interesting this year too.

Meath away to Sligo, Wexford, so it could be worse for us. Will be an intersting league with the placings dictating who ends up in the Timmy Morphine Cup.

Once again Paidi ill-advisedly jumps into a management job simply to give two fingers to the Kerry board.

After losing the Kerry job he desperately wanted to hang on to some years ago, off he goes to Westmeath where he burned brightly but not for too long. In fact, it ended in a lame farce as disinterested Paidi simply went through the motions.

Then he gets no favourable response when he sends out the feelers again about the Kerry job, so lo and behold he jumps at a job in Clare. Then, instead of his first priority being to talk about where he's going to lead Clare and what he might do for them, all he can think about is firing a broadside at the Kerry county board for not considering him for the recent vacancy.

Shows where Paidi's head is at if you ask me and I wouldn't be too hopeful if I was a passionate Clare supporter.

Arrah turfsmoke will ye get off the feckin' fence and tell us what ye really think for God's sake...

Don't overlook the value of securing Wicklow at home. They'll have come up a long way by then under Micko and will be seriously in the mix in this division, especially in the very early rounds of the league when bigger teams are getting warmed up. They'll be flying fit and rearing to go from the off. With things as bad as they are with us, you wouldn't be surprised if they turned us over. Although hopefully I'm being pessimistic on the side of caution there...

Also, it'll be a serious grudge match away to our great rivals Waterford.

Meath at home under lights would be sweet. Played them four/five times in league in my living memory, all but one of them has been in Navan so it's about time we got them back in Breffni.

well dooher's doing ritely to have picked-up two All-Ireland medals for gaelic football, and be known in the same circles as Ian Thorpe for swimming - where does he get the time?!
An all-round athlete - maybe they should build a 50m pool in Croker, and open it up for the swimmers too! Notice Ian Thorpe ia a SWIMMER!! 

Erm...oh never mind.

I've heard nothing save for Gallagher turning up and running rings round the lot of them. Most of the old heads are back in supplemented by a gang of new lads. I think there's a McCabe lad from Crosserlough in there, a former minor.

It's a major 'what if' for me about Connolly. How we could have been doing with his steel and determination against Kerry in the 97 semi...but he didn't do the work and had to be turfed out. I'd say he's a sorry man blew his chance of being part of our only Ulster SFC winning team in 28 years or whatever it was.

Shame but like alot of other very talented players, just didn't have the discipline. If he was playing under McElkennon though, he'd have been carried despite his excesses.