When you've emerged unscathed from an at times dicey afternoon in the Ulster championship it's easier to be rigorously objective in your assessment of the five goal-scoring chances that somehow eluded your team.

Down manager Paddy O'Rourke took a temperate view of the opportunities that came his side's way in a first half that they ended on level terms with a feisty Cavan side rather than comfortably in front.

"Most of the chances we went for today, bar one, were real goal opportunities," he said, "and should have been finished. But we knew at half-time that we'd continue to create some opportunities and if we took our scores in the second half, we'd win the game.

"I felt reasonably comfortable at the break. Their inside forwards were causing us a wee bit of trouble and we dealt with that by dropping a man back and once we took that threat out of their team we knew we were going to win.

"They never really made up the gap on us (after Down's 55th-minute goal) but in fairness to them they really came back at us."

Team captain Benny Coulter was centrally involved in the whole afternoon, having scored the vital goal.

"Five chances," he said, "and I'd say I had about four of them but he made some great saves. We should have been at least three or four points up at half-time. But we stayed calm. I thought in the second half it looked like getting away from us but we got that goal at the right time."

Defeat by Cavan two years ago had taught the developing Down team some lessons and Coulter pinpointed the difference. "In the second half we started putting things together, talking to each other, talking our way through the game. Two years ago we wouldn't have done that as we saw against Cavan when we threw it away."

O'Rourke's Cavan counterpart Martin McElkennon was disappointed at how close his side had come to repeating their win over the same opposition of two years ago. "We were in the game with 15 minutes to go when there was a point or so in it and it was there to be won. We had chances and maybe shot from angles far out but we gave it a big effort, having gone in with so many men missing.

"Jason O'Reilly had a shot taken off the line just towards the end there and maybe if that had gone in things would have been different."