Keoghan relieved with Cavan win

Victories in championship football do not come easy. When you are based in the toughest province you have to fight for every result as Cavan manager Donal Keoghan found out at Casement Park yesterday when his side edged out Antrim.

It was Antrim's inability to convert their scoring chances, especially in the second half when they kicked 10 wides, which ultimately cost the Saffrons the game.

"I'm glad to win it, but obviously we conceded 1-14," Keoghan said.

"I thought at times that it was very pedestrian and that it maybe lacked the championship intensity.

"They got a goal against the run of play and we made a few very bad mistakes. They kicked 13 wides and if a few of them had gone over it would have put us in a different position."

Keoghan believes that switches in the midfield sector helped his side to win yesterday's preliminary round tie and book a quarter-final spot against Armagh on June 15.

"Lorcan Mulvey came out the middle of the field after ten minutes of the second half and that stabilised our midfield.

"We started to win a lot of primary ball in the middle of the field and once we started getting ball into our forward line, we were ramping in and we kicked seven points on the trot."

And it was the switch of midfielder Dermot McCabe to full-forward which set Cavan up nicely for a win, after the 31-year-old slotted home a vital 33rd-minute goal.

"We opened up well but I thought we didn't use Dermot enough," Keoghan maintained.

"We didn't put enough of ball in on top of him. I thought every time that the ball went in there that there was danger written all over it. He's a big man."

However the Cavan boss hinted that the 6ft 2in McCabe may be utilised in a different way next time out against Armagh.

"Hopefully those are the things we can work on in training and maybe it won't be Dermot at full-forward next, maybe we'll have to try something different," he said.

But Keoghan insisted that major improvements are needed ithe Breffni men are to advance past Armagh and into Ulster's last-four.

"I'm happy enough but we wouldn't be good enough to beat Armagh (based on a display like this)," he said.

"We have four weeks to work on it though. We'll take the positives out of it and move on."