“The grass it is green around Ballyjamesduff, and the blue skies are over it all”.
“Come Back Paddy Reilly”
Observe the above excerpt from the lovely old song. Picture it. Take it in. Maybe the grass has been knocked for hay or silage. The blue skies over it all, helping it on its journey to completion.
An idyllic vision of an Irish summer, isn’t it? High summer. G. A. A. weather. Provincial Final perfection. Fairytale stuff. Alas, this season, the parametres are different. Firstly, it must be acknowledged that, in the current global climate, to have any championship at all is to be celebrated. Though my reservations about how the football has been structured and run off should be fairly clear at this stage.
Anyhow, agriculture is one of the very few sectors of society which has escaped relatively unscathed from Covid-19 related disruption. For most people, that is. Some of us haven’t been so lucky in that regard. Though in this instance, the point is that instead of grass being green and the sky being blue when Cavan re-captured the Anglo Celt Cup it was against a backdrop of open silage pits and slatted sheds packed to capacity!
The Breffni County have a long and storied tradition in Gaelic football. To the extent that, while the following is a prime example of cliches often overused in this trade, they really should be regarded as one of the sleeping giants of the game. Not that many G.A.A. players have songs produced in their honour but you can count ‘Gallant John Joe’ (O’Reilly) among them. And, perhaps an even greater indication of legendary status in this country – JP McManus naming a horse after him also!
From my point of view, the first of those from that era was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the late John Wilson, former Tainaiste. What I also should have known, mind you, long before it became the case, was the fact that Meath legend Martin O’Connell was a nephew of another hero of 1947 and the Polo Grounds in New York, the great Mick Higgins.
Martin was in the news recently after his All Ireland medal from 1987 was stolen from the O’Connell family home but returned to him just after Cavan had brought the Anglo Celt Cup home for the first time in 23 years. Fate or coincidence? You decide.
Now, I’ve debated writing about what follows hereafter for yonks but have finally found a way to work it into a piece. Whether this has ever happened to anybody else is unknown – it would certainly leave one feeling less insane if it were the case – but, when I was younger, I repeatedly had the same dream. Night after night, to the point where it became like a television series in my head.
Two of them actually. That were so specific and clear in their visualisation that it was hard to know whether to be intrigued or terrified. One was of me working as a fulltime farmer, farming about 5,000 acres, all my mates from school with me. I could go on.
The other one, and the reason why what you are reading exists, was that I kept visualising myself managing Cavan. Why? I have absolutely no idea. The nearest to a reason that can be arrived at is the fact that the school team wore blue and white at the time and were in fact quite successful. It was either that or knowing that Cavan full forward Fintan Cahill is a cousin of my friend Alan Browne – he’s the image of him too!
Then there was the fact that between RTE actually having a proper National League highlights programme and yours truly being a voracious – if sporadic – reader I’ve always been able to keep up with what was going on across all the divisions. Indeed, it was a boast of great pride that when I was far greener than is now the case regarding the collation of information and statistics, there was still an ability to name at least one footballer on every county team in the country. Sean McGreevey of Antrim, Limerick’s John Quane and Gary Hurney from Waterford were special party pieces at that time.
Stephen King and Ronan Carolan would’ve been Cavan’s representatives in the ensemble back then. However, in the winter of what was either 1994 or ’95, highlights of a league game between Armagh and Cavan – played at the Athletic Grounds in its original incarnation – in which a player who would go on to be one of my favourite midfielders – Dermot McCabe – was viewed for the first time.
Even then, the big Gowna man oozed class and stood out like a lighthouse as a leader. Thus, when he was joined by other talented young players (as they were then) such as Peter, Larry and Jason Reilly, Anthony Forde and a certain Mickey Graham, it was no wonder they engineered a breakthrough shortly thereafter under the guidance of Martin McHugh. Those players had set the ball rolling on that mini revolution when winning an Ulster U-21 title in 1996 before defeating a Meath team seven of whom collected Sam Maguire medals about five weeks later.
In ways though, Cavan didn’t get as much out of that bunch of players as they might have. They lost that U-21 decider to a Kerry team laden with lads who, the following season, gathered senior gongs against. After again defeating the blue and white outfit at the penultimate hurdle after they had very dramatically reigned supreme in Ulster.
That ’97 was the last time until most recently they wintered the Anglo Celt Cup must be regarded as a major disappointment to those in the Breffni County. However, what they undoubtedly did do was act as an inspiration to the generation which came behind them.
Perhaps,most significantly, what that triumph alsi did, presumably, was click things into gear to keep things going forward into the future. A nettle unforgivably not grasped in other places when the going was good. The fruits of the aforementioned foresight were handsomely borne out too, yielding a plethora of underage Ulster titles.
Last Sunday, those underage triumphs gloriously bore fruit. Brilliantly, unexpectedly. Inspirational. Cavan fulfilled their potential and, thanks to the methods which they employed in so doing so offered hope to the masses of the football world. Their secret? Kicking the ball! Remarkable concept? Eh.
To be fair, it should be pointed out that Mickey Graham’s charges splendidly deployed a multi-faceted strategy which, strange as it may seem, totally bamboozled their much more vaunted opponents. Yet, it was when they went back to what most would consider old fashioned football that they sealed the most unlikely (to most) of successes. A victory highlighted by the exceptional, old style fielding of Thomas Galligan and the exceptional long range point taking of Gearoid McKiernan in particular. The Swanlinbar clubman is cut from the same cloth as McCabe and so many times in recent years, when the rears of the Breffni boys were precariously close to the meat cleaver it has been he who saved their bacon.
With the greatest of respect to the Cavan players, and they have some fine ones in Raymond Galligan, Jason McLoughlin, Killian Clarke, Ciaran Brady, Galligan, McKiernan and Conor Madden but, for me at least, the major kudos for their most unlikely of triumphs must go to manager Mickey Graham.
The former classy corner forward, if memory serves me correctly, cut his teeth in management with the Cavan U-21’s before really bursting onto the management scene with St Columbas of Longford. Winning a couple of county championships would be noteworthy enough but taking the Mullinaleaghta men on an adventure that only the provincial club championships can constuct. As they emulated the escapades of Eire Og of Carlow, St Gall’s from Antrim and Rathnew representinr Wicklow.
So now Cavan’s players and their highly gifted manager get the opportunity their achievement merited to show what they can do on the greatest stage our games have to offer. Doubtless, they won’t be given a prayer of halting the Dublin steam train.
That said, the Kilmacud Crokes contingent will surely warn their colleagues about the perils of taking a Mickey Graham-coached outfit lightly!
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