Gowna take Cavan SFC title after one-sided affair against Kingscourt Stars

Gowna 5-15 Kingscourt Stars 0-13

Gowna romped to their 10th Senior Championship title with a brilliant performance in this one-sided Cavan SFC decider.

In retaining their title, a young Gowna side – under the management of Fintan Reilly and former Cavan star Dermot McCabe – overcame a nervy early start to completely dominate after the first quarter with a performance full of pace and class.

After 16 minutes, the Stars led by 0-6 to 0-2 but Gowna's trademark in recent years has been their ability to get goals and they turned the game on its head with a devastating five-minute burst in which they struck for 2-1.

And when they added another goal before the break to lead 3-5 to 0-8 at the interval, the momentum was firmly with the defending champions and there seemed to be no way back for the 11/4 underdogs.

After a cagey opening spell, Kingscourt opened the scoring with the first of a succession of high-quality first-half points when Padraig Faulkner bombed one over from 40 metres.

Tiarnan Madden levelled the scoring with a 40-metre free but the Stars would score five of the next six points to take control of the contest. After a well-worked move, Alan Clarke laid off for Peter Corrigan to clip over but Gowna quickly countered with a long-range Ryan Donohoe effort.

Kingscourt by now were growing in confidence, bypassing Gowna’s zonal press and succeeding in getting their restarts away, and they turned the screw – although they were living dangerously at times, somehow managing to keep Gowna out after a goalmouth scramble for the second time.

Jordan Morris showed his speed to tear in and fist over and the lead was doubled when Joe Dillon ran at the defence and curled in. Shane Duffy won the resulting kick-out and found Barry