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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.

T. Galligan dropped after playing with Lacken Seniors not U21s. Mullagh pitch not playable on the Sunday (county players allowed play these rounds) match moved to Thurs night. County had a running session and Galligan missed the session. Absolute madness! We have a lot of players injured-carrying knocks-and we send a lad home for playing with his club.

Jesus Christ.

Have to agree, Itchy. Mattie has redeemed himself to a good extent this year so far but that decision  to not wrap McVeety in cotton wool as soon as he had so much as cracked a fingernail simply beggared belief. It's almost certainly cost us whatever small chance we had against Donegal in the first place but hopefully he'll come back for what proves to be a decent run in the qualifiers, after a few years of underachievement there.

I literally cannot come up with any sane reason why he'd have been left on. Very disappointing.

Crazy game altogether. Not much between them as usual except Ros looked a bit more composed and clinical at key times. A few standout key moments were a nonsense free against mc veety which lead to a roscommon goal, which to compound matters looked to have been thrown to the net, another charmed goal escape for Ros when the issue was very much alive and Cavan coming strong followed by a Ros goal, and then the management leaving McVeety on when injured which lead directly to a Roscommon score. Galligan fluffing his 45s too, he's clearly not reliable enough.  I wonder was there a cavan foot block went unpunished in the square in the second half too though.

No complaints about the result anyway, Roscommon slightly the better and deserving and well done to them, but from the shambles we were lead to expect in January Cavan have come a long way. Lots of fight in us. Either side look way too generous at the minute to trouble anyone majorly in the summer but August football is a legitimate target for both at least.

On we go.

 
Sure if it was in your back garden, you'd pull the curtains and simply return to your main passion instead - the ritualistic, daily sacrificing of your self-respect here on the internet. And each to their own!

If we lose it'll be dispiriting, I'm not so interested in "winning the internet" in squabbles with strangers every day that I can't admit that, but that's more because it's part of a perplexing trend of defeats for which there is no real talent differential between the sides that accounts for it. Not because I lie awake at nights tormented by thoughts of Roscommon.

If we win, and make no bones about it, we'll want to win it, it'll be greeted equally pragmatically for what it is. A nice hoodoo-ending win against a team that are our equals or not so far ahead as results - or the breathless rhetoric of some - would have a casual observer believe.

It'll serve up some good talking points either way and it's good to see you are now very invested in this meaningless game Syf, it's good to have you on board.

Are you glad you get to play us at least two times in the next 12 months now?

I am. It's getting a bit incestuous by now but it'll be nice when we finally address the ridiculous situation of a merely above-average team like ourselves always having the whip hand over us, and when it happens it will no doubt result in a radical reappraisal of Roscommon from Syferus given that they'll have lost to Cavan, a mere footballing backwater in a handy province.

It seemed at the time like it mattered more - because it did, at the time - but the next game is more important especially to Cavan. If we both get promoted and we have a trophy too plus a long awaited win over Ros, I think nobody will be muttering into their pints about how terrible it was to lose in the Hyde. Apart from yourself, maybe. 

Securing promotion and a trophy would make the defeat at the Hyde pretty meaningless as well as get that Roscommon gorilla off our backs. There's so little between the sides that the dominance of the Ros over us is hard to fathom. If we can't beat them in this one, we might never.

Needless to say I'm delighted with Cavan's performance today, securing promotion. McGleenan has gone from a somewhat lampooned and derided figure to having earned the respect and gratitude of every Cavan supporter by equalling Terry Hyland's achievement in rapidly getting us back to the top flight at his first time of asking. Despite being shorn of some of the talent his predecessor had he worked with what was left to him and added to it, and achieved something no Cavan supporter thought possible, just three months ago. Congratulations to all concerned. McGleenan has totally turned things around and if he manages to make some sort of impact in championship - a whole different ball game as we've seen in other years - then we might be on to something special.

Whether we stay up or go down we as a county are not going to contend for any serious silverware outside of the O'Byrne Cup or Division 3 till probably around 2022 at the earliest by all indications.

I think it'd actually serve Meath better to go down and rebuild for a few years. There'd be a trampoline effect and reorienting from dropping out of the limelight and mixing it with teams that are unlikely to put big beatings on you like Longford, Fermanagh, Carlow and maybe Westmeath. After a few years of ambition that matches ability, then you can come back up and be competitive and in the hunt for Division 1, like Cavan did after similar years spent putting in the foundation stones. Like Itchy says, it's something of a conundrum how a county like Meath has let things disintegrate to this degree.

Only game that counts is the Roscommon match. This is the one I want us to get promotion from. If Roscommon lose it effectively blows their chance of promotion so they have to throw everything at us. We have something to prove to ourselves as well when it comes to the Rossies so if ever there was a league game to test our championship pulse then this is it.

You wrote my post for me. My feelings exactly, I'm sick to me shite of losing to Roscommon in big matches. No disrespect to an opponent that's evenly matched with us but why we capitulate against them time and again bewilders me, so it would be a nice feather in the hat - after a very positive year so far - to get that monkey off our backs as well and claim promotion in the process. It would leave us under no pressure on the final day also, but look - let's not get ahead of ourselves, it's only three months ago we were fearing relegation and talking in terms of meltdown behind the scenes.

It should be played at championship pitch too so it will be a great developer for the team and give us supporters a great insight into the team. We seem to say this every game, every weekend, but this time it's true; the next test will be the toughest so far, and then the one after that, with Tipp, even tougher again.

Yes, of course Tipp are right in there too. It'll be tasty.

Clare beating Down in Newry is a big result for them and for the division overall. It'd seem Cavan and Ros are in the box seat to go up although neither are the finished article by any means, and Louth are gone for sure.
Meath look likeliest to be joining them which wouldn't have been expected before the league began, but it might be best for the Royals to go down and develop at their true level before coming back up stronger in maybe three or four years' time.