It’s all of four years since Terry Hyland took over the reins of the Cavan footballers on the eve of the 2012 championship after

Val Andrews had stepped down following a declaration of player discontent.

It’s been a bumpy trip in the meantime and just last summer Hyland thought long and hard about staying on in the wake of the qualifier defeat by Roscommon before re-committing at the end of September.

Since then things have come together remarkably and Sunday’s emphatic win over Armagh in the Ulster quarter-final comes just weeks after Hyland’s team secured a return to Division One football for the first time in 12 years – while adding an impressively prolific attacking game to a previously defensive orientation.

The next match is an undoubted challenge – against a Tyrone side, which devastated Derry in their quarter-final and which beat Cavan in April’s Division Two final in Croke Park. However, Hyland and his team are feeling upbeat.

Hyland’s involvement with Cavan is long-standing. He was a selector with Andrews during the Dubliner’s first stint in the county as manager and it was natural that he would want to give the top job a shot after Andrews terminated his second period in charge.

Optimism

The county has managed just one Ulster title in the 47 years but the optimism in the county at present is grounded in a sequence of fine under-21 teams, which won four successive provincial titles and reached the 2013 All-Ireland final.

While involved with the seniors, Hyland was manager for the first two years of that sequence before Peter Reilly took over. According to Andrews, his former selector has been a critical influence in the rise of Cavan in recent years.

“Terry is to be applauded. He’s a learner – as he would have to be as a successful business man. The attacking game evolved because he knew the limitations of being too defensive. He was a major player in that under-21 success because he was aware of the importance of bringing in the best people he could, and from outside if necessary.

“As a business man, he has an innate, strategic instinct. That’s why he identified under-21 as the crucial age group and one of his big strengths is that he’s not afraid to surround himself with expertise. Dublin appointed Bryan Cullen as a full-time strength and conditioning director but Terry was the driver for Cavan to do the same well before that.”

Peter Donnelly, the former Tyrone under-21 captain, was appointed to the position in Cavan before moving back to his own county at the end of last year.

Cavan have laboured under the twin impediments of a suffocating history that saw the county land five All-Irelands in 20 years – the last in 1953 – and a small population, 73,000 at the last census, which limits the choice of footballers.

“They needed to lose the whole tradition thing,” said Andrews. “The Polo Grounds [the New York venue for the 1947 All-Ireland final] was a great achievement but counties have to live in the ‘now’. Terry looked at what was needed for the future rather than what success there was in the past.”

Tyrone will be firm favourites, but five years ago half of the team that beat Derry played in the under-21 Ulster final in which Cavan defeated them.