Sean Cavanagh faced a battle of two fronts against his old adversaries the Ó Sé's at the weekend. The first was on the pitch against against Marc as Cavanagh's Moy faced An Ghaeltacht in the AIB All-Ireland Intermediate Club Championship semi-final.
Cavanagh's club emerged victorious by two points in a game which saw Moy overturn a three point deficit in injury time. During the game, a row erupted between the two All-Ireland winners over Cavanagh inquiring if officials had seen an An Ghaeltacht player strike an opponent. A red card for Eanna O Conchuir soon followed.
Still, respect prevailed between the two. Cavanagh told Ó Sé after the game that it had been an honour to face one of the game's best defenders on so many occasions.
Saturday's game at Semple Stadium was a low scoring affair - 1-5 to 0-6. Post-match, Tomás Ó Sé congratulated Moy on their victory. Though, it was not a game he enjoyed watching.
Hard luck @AnGhaeltacht. Well done to the the Moy and all the best in the final. Hard to watch that football
— Tomás Ó Sé (@tomas5ky) January 27, 2018
Speaking at Croke Park on Monday ahead of this weekend's All-Ireland final against Michael Glaveys, Cavanagh had a response for Ó Sé's criticism.
If I'm honest, all of us would love to go and watch shootouts every night of the week. I would love to see it, I would love to coach my son to play football like that buy you have to be realistic.
There's times I've been sat here in Croke Park watching Dublin keeping the ball for two, three, four, five minutes. The best teams do what they need to do to win and that includes the Dublins and the Kerrys, it includes teams that Tomás played on as well; they had some guys who enjoyed breaking rules and were quite cynical in nature.
Look we all love the idea of a purist game but you have to live with the reality that teams will do whatever it takes.
Come Sunday night, Tomás Ó Sé had further criticism for a Tyrone team. This time it was their senior inter-county footballers following defeat to Galway in the opening round of the National League.
Tyrone managed to put just eight points on the board in the game with just four of those coming from play. Managing to score so little from play was a feat Ó Sé called 'disgraceful' on RTÉ's League Sunday highlights show. The former Kerry player felt Tyrone's style of play is stifling the creativity of their best forwards.
Sean Cavanagh felt Ó Sé's criticism was unfair, especially considering the conditions in Tuam.
"I don't think it's fair to be critical of that game yesterday. I've played up Tuam a number of times, it's heavy turf. You have high winds, a wet day. You're not going to be able to play good football. You're not going to expect teams to run up a 15, 16 point game in those circumstances.
"This notion out there that Tyrone don't run up scores or don't attack is a wee bit silly. It's probably based on the Dublin performance. Yeah, we'll hold our hands up: we were poor that day, we never got going at all.
"You look at some of the scores that we racked up through the championship last year and I've no doubt that they'll rack up some big scores this year because they have the players to do it."
The likes of Paddy Tally, being part of the Galway setup, I have no doubt will add a wee bit of steel and a wee bit of bite to Galway. It will be interesting to watch their results come through. I think they'll be up at the higher end of Division 1 this year.
I don't think it's time to panic. As you see the results come through in the National League, you realise that Galway will nip a right few teams at home and maybe that result was a bad day at the office but they will recover and I think they will be alright.
Sean Cavanagh of Moy ahead of the AIB GAA All-Ireland Intermediate Football Club Championship Final against Michael Glaveys taking place at Croke Park this Saturday 3rd February. For exclusive content and behind the scenes action throughout the AIB GAA & Camogie Club Championships follow AIB GAA on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
