With the sun still beating down hard on St Tiernach's Park, Val Andrews walks up to the waiting media as cool as ice, writes Ian O'Riordan. Despite the closeness of this Cavan victory there is not a bead of sweat, and if there was pressure out there, it didn't seem to bother him.

"Well we weren't particularly good," says the Dublin-based manager, "and at times we were quite poor, so we're just happy to have it won." It was day for some of the lesser known faces to step up, Finbar O'Reilly chief among them: "Well I'm delighted for him because he often gets a bit of stick. He answered his critics today but I have great admiration for all the players." Thoughts soon switch to the final with Tyrone, the sort of opposition that no one wants to meet.

"Well they are raging hot favourites, aren't they? But you never know. We had two bad years and we stuck at it. So it's nice to repay some of the faithful ones."