Having had no senior title at Croke Park for 70 years, Cavan are on the brink of winning two within three months.
Division Four and Tailteann Cup honours aren’t exactly what a county of their tradition and recent history should be dreaming of, having been crowned Ulster champions less than 20 months ago, but Gerard Smith is satisfied that adding the second tier trophy to the League title won in April can be a springboard to better things.
He said: “The group that is there is still relatively young, there is a mix of old, young and experienced.
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“We have probably been a bit inconsistent in our performances over the last two years but we have steadied that ship this year, we got out of Division Four and hopefully if we can get a win on Saturday we can use it as the springboard to push on again next year.
“If we ended this year on a very positive note, it would be encouraging heading into next year that hopefully we will be pushing for another promotion and we will be in the last 16 of Sam if we got the win. It would be another huge 12 months in this group’s journey.”
Although beaten by six points in the end by Donegal in the Ulster semi-final, Cavan were very much in contention for the majority of that game which, had they won it, would have taken them into the qualifiers at the very least instead of the Tailteann Cup.
But they quickly picked things up after that setback to see off Down, Fermanagh and Sligo to reach today’s final against Westmeath.
Smith explained: “We had one or two days off and we were back in midweek. We just had a meeting before training and we were in the Tailteann Cup and there was a chance of getting a bit of silverware.
“We would have been pegged as one of the favourites after our performance against Donegal and we were in the competition whether we wanted to be there.
“That night we decided we were all going to row in here and give this a good crack, Down were coming up which was going to be a real competitive test in the first round and that would have given us a good idea as to whether we wanted to go and push this on or was it just going to be talk at a meeting.
“But I think our performance that day showed how this group and the management were approaching the competition. We are in the final now so hopefully we will get over the line at the weekend.”
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