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Minors got sliced by Monaghan too, shouldn'ta opened me gob.

  Isn't it still something to be positive about though? We ultimately won nothing with the U21s we had/have but we were knocking on the door a good many times, in fact were more or less there and yet contrived to come up short on a few occasions. Although underage success is never a guarantee of senior progress I'd rather have it than not, it's a no-brainer. Either way, I don't think Matty would be the man to manage it though.

I think you're right Itchy. He's not taking the thing forward and appears to be in damage limitation mode. There's a good crop of youngsters coming up at the minute (hopefully they see off Monaghan today in the minor) and if McVeety and Gearoid etc. can stick around to blend them in then there's hope for the future but only if we have someone of vision and imagination at the helm, who might even inspire a few more absentees to come on board. The best Matty can achieve at the moment  - if at all - seems to be to taking us back to ultra defensiveness and making us hard to beat, but that's going to move the needle the way we want. Will the county board press eject though? Probably only if someone within the county indicates they'll step up. There's nobody outside the county would want it I think and tbh, I'd be happier for us to look within anyway.

Didn't turn out as horrendous as it looked like it would be at half time for Cavan, but Tyrone were the better team overall and deserved the win without a whole pile of questions being asked of them. Then again, perhaps Tyrone are only stirring themselves as much as is necessary at this stage of the year but in general they don't look like making an impression at the business end of the championship.
Well done and fair play, no complaints about the result.

Cavan took one or two nice scores but Jesus it's absolutely dire stuff in attack generally. Just lifeless, drab shuffling sideways and backwards, largely going through the motions. What, exactly, is the plan supposed to be? If we amble around slowly enough, Tyrone might nod off and we'll nip in for a few quick goals???

I've seen more energetic attacks by the zombies on the walking dead, who deal better with congestion to at least register the odd score.

I never liked the lad as he always seemed to get over exciting when playing us

Might that be due to Tyrone and not McVeety? 

Where is the furore from the Tyrone men over these suspensions being overturned.

Sure Cavan are so chronic they can't be bothered, it's almost like an apology for foisting Matty upon us God help us all. Even the normally effusive Tyrone posters can't be arsed writing anything either, save for the usual jaded Cavan jokes here and there of course, which only further feed the wearied sense of ennui and inevitability about this game.

Tyrone will win the match in neutral, and may well reverse over the finish line with the handbrake on while Cavan spend 70 minutes inching around, trying to parallel park like Austin Powers.

The jaded, low-hanging fruit gags in the thread about Cavan people and money etc. might well be more entertaining than the football in this one.

Jesus lads, these are grim times. That stupid optimist inside me that always pops up a few days before a championship game is whispering that nobody gave us a ghost of a chance in Division 2 yet we got promoted, so is it possible we somehow, amazingly, pull some sort of magical rainbow out of our arses against Tyrone?

Then reality bites. This sudden changing of horses in mid-stream and reversion to a blanket defence (in appearance anyway, if not effect) is very symptomatic of what I alluded to in another post - there's never been a settled look or clear plan or direction from the top so far, and things now have the appearance of us trying everything and anything in the vain hope of avoiding defeats and clinging to some sort of respectability. It's like watching an inept handyman trying to level the legs of a table and going around each one in turn and only making it worse on each go.

It has all degenerated into a very depressing state of affairs and whereas before I thought Mattie had earned himself a crack at Division 1, it's quite clear now that it has all become a farce and he should be removed before any more damage is done. The question is, if he was all that was interested when we looked a healthier proposition after Hyland, who in God's name would be interested now? We'd have to look within the county. Have the players got any more go left in them for another fresh start after so long achieving practically nothing at senior level?

A lot of disquiet about the Meath ref, but at least we got Wicklow out of the way while looking like the wheels have not come off as the Donegal display hinted at.

Down are no world beaters and are on a low but they might see Cavan as a good shot at a rehabilitation of sorts, or perhaps the arse has fallen out of their season already, who can tell until we see them in the flesh? Our own team are similarly somewhat imponderable. The fact that the most informed analysis on Cavan always tends to be retrospective in nature tells you a lot about the inconsistency and volatility of our tactics and cohesion - every game seems to be "Well, we'll have to wait and see". We roll the dice again and see if our numbers come up and we live to fight another day.

You couldn't afford to be confident after the Donegal effort but you'd have to think we'll win this surely. All about the manner of the performance though. If there's no reaction to Ballybofey then that's very ominous.

I don't know much about Peter Reilly except he was probably a bit unlucky with the 21s those years, and that the style he had the team playing was a bit defensive. Is that his hallmark tactic, or was it horses for courses due the personnel available I wonder?

But while we could definitely do with a stiffer spine and some tactical nouse I'd hate us to go back to an outright defensive style.  One thing is certain though, if we flop abysmally in the qualifiers - with Mattie bizarrely passing the torch/baton/buck to Dara McVeety in an interview I heard (wtf?) - then something should be done both to probe the player falloff issue as suggested by the Celt man, and probably with management too, because we have some more good young blood bubbling up and let's do something structurally/pre-emptive to prevent it ebbing away as well.

The statistics I've seen from Paul Fitzpatrick regarding player turnover are pretty stark. I think we were all aware of a fair amount of personnel churn but that really is jaw-dropping and some of those names there would be a massive boost to the team.

Hard to know, in a way, what to say about our senior team performance at the minute. We exceeded expectations by getting to Division 1 and felt maybe McGleenan was getting his act together, coupled with some ok displays in Division 1 the year before. On the positive side, the players he had there in the league were really pulling for him and the jersey and things looked to be progressing, albeit with significant flaws. But the nature of the loss in the final to Roscommon seems to have revealed those flaws to be deep structural fissures and the whole thing crumbled embarrassingly against Donegal. I didn't expect us to win there but the nature of the display was fairly indicative of both schoolboy type management and perhaps a lack of the player drive and spirit that was there in the spring - have the wheels come off entirely since the league final?

Anything less than a significant renaissance in the qualifiers and I honestly think Mattie should go. I'm never one for knee-jerk/manager merry-go-round stuff but going into Division 1 under the current setup, with no championship 'bounce' behind us, quite simply we'd be slaughtered and it might be better to have another man there in advance of that. Who that might be would be anybody's guess.

Championship exposed the frailties quite badly here. Getting into division 1 will have possibly bought mcgleenan a bit more time but if the qualifiers go poorly too as seems probable off this, will he get the road I wonder?
Going back to defensive football and the natural inferiority complex it engendered in this group of players/repeated failures when victory beckoned, is not the answer. Especially when we have such talented youngsters again coming through at schools and minor. Losing by smaller margins is still losing.

I'd have said Cavan would have pushed Donegal to the pin of their collar if we were at full strength, but with the injuries and the fact it's in MacCumhaill Park, I can't see anything but a Donegal win here. McVeety a massive loss, and a massively criminal loss too when you consider the amateur hour way in which he picked up the injury.