‘Is there much pressure on us? I don’t think so’ - McCabe

JFC final preview

The old adage tells us that you must lose one to win one and if there’s any truth in that, one would imagine the defeat in last year’s final should stand to Knockbride.

“You’d be hoping whatever bit of novelty was in last year, you can only do something for the first time ever once. We did that last year so it’s nothing new to us this year,” says manager Aidan McCabe.

“What does that mean to you in the long run? You don’t start a point up or have any bit of an advantage. There are probably a dozen lads from Belturbet who played in an intermediate final five years ago so it’s not exactly completely new territory for them either.

“Look, there are things that are new. Your pen pics, getting pictures and all that stuff that we did for the first time last year, we have that done and dusted now so we’d be hoping it will stand to us but in practical terms I’m not sure what it’s going to give you.”

A Spring in Division 1 provided a great grounding for Knockbride entering this competition.

“In the last four or five years, 10 points has kept you out of the bottom four and that’s genuinely what we were aiming for. We got nine tenths of the way there, another point would have got us out of it.

“It was great in a lot of ways but we didn’t win the nine points in a raffle, they were earned, every one of them, you get punished ruthlessly. We had a very poor 10 minutes at the end of the Cavan Gaels game and they stuck 4-3 on us.

“We were missing 16 players that day so it really shone a light on our panel. There were a lot of lads who played a lot of Division 1 football who are maybe a bit disappointed that they didn’t play as much in the Junior Championship. Look, it stood to us, we feel that if we got back there again, we would have learned a lot and would be a lot further on but that’s for again.

“Like this year, like Saturday, it doesn’t really count for an awful lot – every championship game is what you do from the first whistle to the last whistle.”

There is the sense that teams have raised their game against Knockbride this year, with every match against the competition favourites like a mini All-Ireland, as one observer noted.

“I’m not sure any time we played a team last year it wasn’t an All-Ireland final either, I’m sure they were going just as hard for it because it was ourselves and Arva (fancied to win it). There’s not that other team grabbing the attention (this year) which is totally understandable.

“Is there much pressure on us? I don’t think so. This is my third year here, there hasn’t been one year where I and we haven’t been lining up a championship final and trying to get that cup home… have we been going that well? No, look, there have been elements of our game in the last two games that have been poor and there are some elements we could point to, and we’ve discussed, that we would be extremely happy about.

“Probably we just haven’t been keeping the scoreboard operator as busy as he should be given some of our other stats. But ultimately that’s the one that counts the most – you can say about kick-outs, you can say about shots, you can say about X, Y and Z, you have to be in front on the scoreboard, that’s really it.

“We’ve had a couple of battles. We had three relegation play-offs as well and there were a lot on the line in them, we had a semi-final and final in the league last year, a relegation against Denn the year before so we’ve played a lot of games with a lot on the line that were very, very close. We came out the wrong side of some of them absolutely but we’ve probably done more than break even on those across the board.

“We would be very happy with how training id going, very happy with our panel, with our options, with our ability to play certain different ways. We played Swanlinbar, they were on five points, same as us, that day and attacking-wise, put our best foot forward. We’ve won tighter games too so we’re very happy but not completely happy, there’s still plenty we need to work on.”

McCabe has huge respect for Belturbet, who he feels are an intermediate-standard outfit.

“They’re very good, that play-off victory over Denn (in the league) gathered greater significance the more Denn went into the Intermediate Championship. They’re a very solid team, they wouldn’t have been out of place in the Intermediate Championship this year, definitely not. We played them and beat them in round three, they were down a couple of players that day… they’ll be a lot further on.

“If we’re battle-hardened, they are too, by a factor of three or four. They had to beat Kill in round four and they did and had a very impressive second half against Shannon Gaels and won a low-scoring, real championship semi-final against Kill so we’ll have to put our best foot forward, they have a lot of men we’ll have to watch and watch very carefully.”