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Brides must hold some sort of record for never kicking a ball and playing inter-county football. I reckon he never 100% recovered from the leg break down in Limerick a few years back, at least his performances never got to the same heights since. I also seen him play for redhills a few times recently enough and he didn't really shine as a county player. Pity.

Alright lads, it was a good performance but lets not get too excited. We were much fitter than Derry on the day and maybe a good bit hungrier too. On the positive side the shooting was good, the work rate was good and we won midfield comfortably. McCabe looking fit was a bit of a shock and good to see, his passing was brilliant today. Also, nice to see a new face doing so well in Michael Cunningham. On the negative Rabbitte going off injured was a blow. It looked like a hamstring so your probably talking 4-6 weeks for that to heal. For me mackey is still too light and is easily bottled up, also he made some poor decisions and held onto the ball a bit too much. Maybe in the good weather he will excel.  Mckeever played well but missed three scorable frees and so we are still struggling for a free taker on the rh side. I know we are also looking for a bit more aggression but don't mistake disent for trying to play the hard man. We were lucky on a few occassions that frees weren't turned against us for silly pushing and messing after the ref has blown. Aggression needs to be channeled correctly and 'after the whistle' aggression just undos good work. All in all a good day and i even had a tenner on cavan at 12-5 on paddy powers.

Has the Cavan panel been announced yet for the McKenna Cup? I see you reckon mad eddie and Brennan are of the panel. Poor auld Brennan is getting a very raw deal. He was even previewed on Hogan Stand there last week I think. Anyone making the trip to Celtic Park? Can't go myself, have to go and look at a new car in the big smoke. Will probably try and catch it somewhere on TG4.

CavanCola,

To be honest I have no idea what the team will look like but I would love to see the following players on the team just so I can see some of the terrible injury luck we have had relapse a bit...

Gerald Pierson
Mark McKeever
Michael Lyng
Darren Rabbitte

I'd also like to see McCabe at FF and also see if there is any sort of forward strategy being worked on to get ball into these players. On paper a Johnson, McCabe and Pierson FF line looks good to me.

Then I am praying that we see someone around the middle take up the slack that McCabes fielding will leave behind and also that we get a dedicated free taker on the team and quit this messing we've been at for the last few years.

Well lads, off home after work in a few minutes. Have a good christmas and hopefully we'll have a good year of the football. BTW, any of you ever visit the http://www.breifne.ie/ website. It is a tourism thing and nothing to do with football, but there is loads of stuff about the old kingdom, which we were in the heart of, that you never get thought about anymore sadly. I spent a good hour on it the other night reading through.

1- Cavan to win Senior All Ireland
2- Cavan to win U21 All Ireland
3- Cavan to win Minor All Ireland

If you're getting wishes you might as well wish big!! Anyway, If I had four I'd add Cavan to win Liam McCarthy but even the Fairy God Mother couldn't pull that one off.

Cathal Dervan gets away with writing this shite because there is a market for his brand of verbal muck. Every soccer loving, GAA hater out there with a big chip on their shoulder has a life size picture of Cathal on the wall of their bedroom ya know. Cathal doesn't really want the GAA and FAI to be buddies either cos his livelyhood depends on him being able to write this type of crap about the evil GAA that stole everything from the poor FAI. It just isn't fair.....
Boo f**king Hoo.

Taking a score consistantly is most important skill in football. Almost every team that has won the AI has had at least one truly outstanding point getter. Joe Brolly, Peter Canavan, Gooch, Mickey Linden, Joyce etc etc. IMO, the lack of such a player has cost Mayo the AI on a number of occassions. Players with this skill are like gold dust and when passion, fitness, hunger etc are level in a match it is the quality of the forwards scoring that is usually the difference at the end.

Gaynor has made a bed for himself unfortunately. When we played Derry a few seasons ago in the back door Johnny McBride was on him and never let him alone for a second, thumping the head off him. Gaynor eventually started to lose it and then started to forget about ball and went down to the level Mcbride wanted him too. My point is, if Gaynor doesn't learn he will be constantly targeted by wind up merchants like McBride.
BTW, that game against Mayo he came back for after the long suspension he got from the U21 final was one he was very lucky not to get sent off in, as he jumped with his knees into a player on the ground.
I still reckon he is one of  our best players but he needs to find a balance between the nasty stuff and the proper level of aggression - sort of like Roy Keane had to do at one point in his career.

Castlerahan won 1-8 to 0-1. Wasn't at it but the result is up on aertel p586.

FFS. Not the actions of a happy bunny! Maybe there is something to the previous post about Keoghan not seeing eye-to-eye with Gaynor.

If I were Keoghan I'd be more worried about who has it in for him (half of Cavan)!!! I reckon Gaynor could be one of our star men this year if someone could help him channel his aggression into football and away from stupidity. I also think Cavan are going to need a three man midfield this year as with McCabes legs gone they just don't have the players to compete with the best on a 1 to 1 basis. I think we'll have to model ourselves on the Tyrone team of around 6/7 years ago which had a small athletic midfield and broke every ball that came near them. I'm thinking maybe Paul Brady might be a man that could be one of the three??

I hear a rumour we played Laois in a challenge over the weekend and got hammered. Anyone have any info on that like what team started?

anglocelt39 - We didn't lose to Sligo last year, we beat them farily well in Sligo. The league last year was a tough battle for us since we had so many players out and after doing all the hard bits (beating Sligo and Westmeath away) we took our eye of the ball through some classic over confidence and blew it all against Waterford. It is also worth remembering that we lost to Louth in a game we should have won by 6 points or so too. If we had to have beaten waterford we would be all saying that we had a fairly decent run in the league with half a team. There is a fine line between success and failure! I expect a better show this year if we can get some of our players fit and assuming that keoghan isn't as big a clown as most of us reckon. I also believe it is achievable for Cavan to beat Down in Breffni and Beat Monaghan in Clones if we prepare properly. If we don't believe that then we might as well not bother playing them. For me our goals for the year at senior level should be a semi final place in Ulster and promotion to Div 1 in league.

I think we played Meath at home twice in the league in the last 5/6 years. I remember we beat them by one point cos someone threw a bottle at Sean Boylan that day. I also remember Prior from Swad blatently flattening Geraghty in front of the posts and the ref playing on in the last minute. We also hammered them by 10 points or so as well, I remember Mark Reilly getting sent off that day. Was that the year we made the league final??

I hope the league will be taken serious this year as in reality my only goal at senior level this year is to get promotion back to Div 1. A bonus would be beating Down and then putting Monaghan back in their box in the championship.

I was wondering if anyone knows, if we beat Down, where will the game against Monaghan be?