Waterford a ghost that's taken 10 years to banish

Writing before Cavan's win over Galway, PAUL FITZPATRICK looked at an infamous defeat 10 years ago last weekend and how Cavan could finally banish that ghost.

 

*Originally published in The Anglo-Celt print edition on March 31, 2016

 

It was a day when Cavan’s dreams were washed away in the rain – only the pain stayed.

Cast your mind back 10 years ago last Sunday; we know, in ways, it feels like a hundred. Cavan, their team backboned by Ulster medallists, were coming on strong and had strung together four wins on the bounce.

And then they travelled to Mullingar for round six of the league and made it five with a 0-12 to 0-7 win over an excellent side who had been Leinster champions just 18 months previously.

The county went wild. There were whoops of delight in the stand among the huge travelling Breffni supporters and, in the bowels of the stadium beneath them, Cavan manager Martin McElkennon was taking his opportunty to utter some home truths into the pressmen’s dictaphones.

“There are a lot of begrudgers out there who wrote this team off and didn’t give them credit...” he began, high on victory and, metaphorically at least, wagging his finger in chastisement of those who should have known better.

That Wednesday, the sun shone and The Celt hit the news-stands.

“Cavan’s fifth consecutive win in Division 2B of the National Football League at Cusack Park, Mullingar on Sunday last has almost certainly ensured their promotion to the premier grade,” wrote Sports Editor Eamonn Gaffney on these pages.

“Their home game against Waterford on Sunday week is, dare we say it, a banker.”

He did dare say it and the county, including the team, believed it. And sure why wouldn’t they? Waterford had won just one game, by a point against Sligo, and had conceded 13-77 in the six they’d played. Cavan had embarrassed them the year before deep in Déise territory, winning by 7-14 to 1-7.

“When,” asked Eamonn, “will the string of modern day heavy defeats come to an end for Waterford?”

Fast forward to the following Sunday and the Munster minnows are making their way north in a convoy of cars. Along the way, they stop for breakfast in the Poitín Stil in Rathcoole. The plan was to stop there on the way home, too – make a day of it.

At half-time they were two down but well in the game and, in the dressing-room, their colourful manager John Kiely told his players a story he had heard about a man from Dundalk who had travelled up north and put £5,000 on Cavan to win the match by a margin of 14 points or more.

Who could have blamed him? Their county had never won a football match on Ulster soil but the stars aligned and they left Cavan with a win, 0-14 to 1-9. It was a sensation.

This time, there was no talk of “begrudgers” - in fact, McElkennon couldn’t bring himself to speak to the media at all. 

The “string of heavy defeats” had ended. By Wednesday, Gaffney was rightly describing the loss as “one of Cavan football’s darkest hours”.

And, there in black and white on the pages of The Celt, was the Waterford manager imparting some advice on what sort of player the Tyrone man should bring into the Cavan side! Imagine.

While he spoke to the press, Kiely held a rolled up programme in his hand. In it, Owen McConnon had written that a defeat would be “the biggest disaster since the sinking of the Titanic”. Nobody saw the white and blue iceberg until it was too late.

Why do we bring this up? Well, lest we forget. The after-shocks reverberated for weeks and months and even when they stopped, the ground the players trod seemed shaky. Some say that particular bunch never recovered.

It was a defeat, a humbling at odds of 1/50, that set the county back years. Over the next half dozen seasons, Cavan shipped some of the worst losses in living memory and eventually bottomed out when they trudged off the field having lost by 20 points at home to Kildare on a day when Breffni Park became a circus for the afternoon.

It took time to rebuild – a whole lot of precious time, as the song says, to do it right.

But they got there and last year, for the first time since the Waterford boys arrived belching from their breakfast in Rathcoole and smashed our season into smithereens, Cavan went into the final game of the season with an eye on a final ascent to the summit.

It didn’t happen on that free-wheeling day in Navan, when the game ebbed and flowed and the teams kicked over 30 wides between them and the Royals snatched it.

But it could happen this Sunday. Already, Cavan have picked up more points (eight) than they did in seven games last year in this division – and all were agreed beforehand that this year’s Division 2 was loaded with more quality than in 2015.

 

Long wait

How long Cavan have spent outside of Division 1 is a tricky question to answer. First of all, curious as sounds, we must define what we even mean by ‘Division 1’.

The GAA like to move the goalposts every few years to keep things fresh – regardless if the switch is back to the previous, discarded format or not – and that has happened a couple of times over the past 15 years or so.

The last time there were four divisions, and Cavan were in the top one, was way back in 2002. On that occasion, under Mattie Kerrigan, the Blues made it all the way to the league final, hitting five goals in the semi against Roscommon, only to get steam-rolled by a Tyrone side who would win the following year’s All-Ireland.

After that, the structure was altered and Cavan found themselves in Division 1B the following season. That was it for a few years before the set-up changed again, we woke up one morning and realised we were now a Division 3 side.

Under Donal Keogan, they went up; understrength and with momentum draining like a sieve, they came back down.

And there Cavan stayed for the longest time – it took seven years to break out of that division, which they finally managed in 2014. But if last year fizzled out, this one seems to be fizzling in – a win or even a draw in round seven would seal Cavan’s passage, not just to a waltz round Jones Road with the Red Hands - which would be nice, make no mistake - but to the big dance next Spring.

So. We started at the top, went – almost – to the bottom, and now we’re here, peeping over the wall at how the posh kids next door play.

Galway’s princely past and their blueblood lineage at underage means their name still rings out but they are not the force of old.

The Tribesmen could always play ball but, apart perhaps from Meath, no other county has struggled as much to adapt to the changes in Gaelic football. The revolution came, the nouveau riche seized power and the keepers of the magical maroon and white were suddenly left looking dowdy and unfashionable, a boring uncle trying to keep pace with the kids.

The tempo has changed and they haven’t kept time with the beat. Kevin Walsh, their manager and stalwart of All-Ireland success in 1998 and 2001, is attempting to teach them the new moves and while he’s had some success this campaign – notably a gallant win in Derry – they seemed to be stuttering at the wrong time.

But they hung in there. They drew last Sunday against Fermanagh; had they lost, their destiny was out of their own hands and Derry could have stolen back in.

Tyrone are up and after 36 matches, it all comes to down to next Sunday to decide who joins them – on this occasion, two into three won’t go. It’s an opportunity, for both sides, that doesn’t come around too often any more.

Whatever of Galway, were Cavan offered, at the start of the league, a chance to go up, to banish the ghosts of Waterford and a decade of heartache once and for all, they’d have grabbed it with both hands.

Here’s hoping they do.