CLOSE FRIENDS ROISIN O’Keeffe and Ellen McCarron are looking to knock each other out of the TG4 All-Ireland ladies senior football championship this weekend.
The former DCU students won O’Connor Cups together in 2010 and 2011, both are teachers and they share a house together in Monaghan town.
But that friendship will be left to one side for an hour when O’Keeffe’s Cavan look to upset McCarron’s Monaghan in Saturday’s TG4 All-Ireland qualifier at Kingspan Breffni Park (5.15pm).
There’s plenty of crossover on both panels as Monaghan’s McAnespie twins, Ciara and Aoife, and Cavan’s Donna English are former DCU O’Connor Cup players also.
And the manager and trainer of those third-level successes, Peter Clarke and Angie McNally, are currently in charge of the Monaghan side.
O’Keeffe and McCarron went head to head last year at intercounty level in the Ulster championship, when Monaghan enjoyed a comfortable win.
But Cavan have made significant progress since then and O’Keeffe is confident that the gap has closed.
“Last year was our first year up senior (following All-Ireland intermediate success in 2013),” she explains.
“After the All-Ireland, a few of the girls, for personal reasons, took the year out.
“A lot of our younger players were blooded in last year and a few games at senior level helped a lot.
“We were starting from a higher base this year.”
Cavan served notice of their intentions with a massive 10-25 to 0-3 victory over Down last time out.
And O’Keeffe said: “Down are missing the majority of their players from the (2014) All-Ireland (intermediate) winning team.
“The scoreboard didn’t really tell the tale. It was still a hard workout for us.”
Monaghan, meanwhile, are aiming to bounce back from their Ulster final defeat at the hands of Donegal.
But there’s been little chat between O’Keeffe and McCarron this week as the big day looms.
“I’m lucky that I have camps in Breffni Park,” O’Keeffe smiles.
“So I’m not down in Monaghan this week.
“We’ll just ignore each other for the guts of two hours!
“Bragging rights are at stake and I taught two of the girls on the Monaghan panel, Muireann Atkinson and Niamh Callan.
“There’s been good banter and a lot of the teachers in the school (Castleblaney) are from Monaghan as well.
“I won’t be looking forward to going back there if we lose!”
McCarron smiled: “We went to college together in DCU and lived together there.
“It’s good that she has the camps in Monaghan and she’s not about!
We haven’t really been talking about the game at all. She does her training, I do mine.
“If we were playing anyone else, we’d be chatting about who we’d be marking.
“We played Cavan last year in Ulster. I never spoken to Roisin on the field and she’s never stopped giving out to me since!
“We’ll just focus on our own games for an hour. One of us will still be in the championship at full-time and one of us will be cheering the other on.
“We’ll be back friends after the game, hopefully!”
Monaghan are favoured to advance but McCarron is wary of the Cavan threat.
“They had a great League campaign and did brilliant in Division 2,” McCarron noted.
“They’re flying at underage too and have players filtering into the senior team.
“They had a good win against Down and we watched that on TV. People said they weren’t up against much but look at what they scored, they were on fire up front. We’ll have to be on our game to stop them.
“Our Ulster final was a complete flop. That’s not taking away from Donegal, who were very organised, had a gameplan and executed it to a tee. We ran into the headlights but we’re not out of the competition.
“The back door isn’t where we wanted to find ourselves but we’re here now.”
