CAVAN V ANTRIM:STRANGE HOW substitutions that do work always make for better comment than substitutions that don't. The Cavan manager, Donal Keoghan, seemed amused when reminded that Lorcan Mulvey's introduction in Casement Park yesterday had helped swing the result in his team's favour.

"Yeah, sure some days you make changes and they work, other days they don't," he said.

"Lorcan really excelled today in the middle of the field when he went in. He's a big man. But we played the fellas that were showing form coming into the game. And I think the three or four changes we made improved the team."

Keoghan wasn't getting too excited, however. Not with Armagh waiting in the quarter-final, which will no doubt give them a real sense the Ulster championship has begun: "Well you'd have to be worried about conceding 1-14 in a game. You won't win too many championship matches doing that. And that's something to work on over the next three weeks . . .

"I thought maybe the game lacked championship intensity. And at times it was played at a pedestrian pace. Look, we came here to win, and I think performed well enough to win. So we'll take the positives out of it and move on.

"It was a young team out there. We took a gamble on Rory Dunne, and Barry Waters - two minors from last year. Both of them played well enough.

"We kicked maybe 1-13 from play as well. I thought we made an awful lot of mistakes as well, when we had possession. Especially in the first half, where I think they got 1-4 from mistakes we made, when we were attacking. I don't think we used Dermot McCabe enough either. Every time the ball went in to him there was trouble."

Jody Gormley is part of the new wave of young, madly enthusiastic managers, but Antrim's defeat seemed to physically drain him, and there was little-enough energy left to make excuses.

"The only positive thing really is that it's a very young Antrim team," he said. "But they're going to have to start growing up and take their chances. I felt in the first half we were doing well at midfield, and it was only Lorcan Mulvey's introduction that swung things for Cavan.

"We also hit 12 or 13 wides, which is critical. In games like this you've got to take your chances, and we didn't take them . .

"We had the chances, yeah, and spurned the opportunities. When you do that, you pay the price.

"Every time Cavan went up the other end they seemed to take a score. Fair play to them; they do have some dangerous forwards. Seán Johnston is a good forward, no doubt about that, and I think the fact they put Dermot McCabe in alongside him made him doubly dangerous."