A unique species: The Cavan football supporter

This week's Cavanman's Diary

He is the best of fans, he is the worst of fans. He is the supporter who would walk a thousand miles through snow and hail, barefooted, to be able to see the match with his own eyes and proclaim, in person, how useless his team are.

Truly, the Cavan football follower is a peculiar beast.

He – or she, of course, but we’ll stick with he for handiness if all are in agreement – bears some similarities with Donald Trump’s fans. The primary defining characteristic is sorrowful nostalgia and bewilderment at how things got so bad. And no, before any Monaghan smartarse interjects, the secondary one is not bad hair and narcissism.

The mark of our tribe is a yearning for the past, to ‘Make Cavan Great Again’. Seamus O’Rourke touched on it in his brilliant recitation about Leitrim’s run to Croke Park in 1994.

“We got a fella in to milk the cows on the Sunday morning. Some Cavanman longing for the days when All-Irelands would be played in the Polo Grounds again… and Cavan might win again.”

I wonder was O’Rourke giving us a rub there; I don’t think so. What I detected was sympathy and a sort of wonderment at the whole carry-on.

The thing is, the time we pine for, well, it’s a folk memory now. If you are 82 years of age, you have seen Cavan win five Ulster titles in your adult life. If you are 36, like me, you’ve seen them win back-to-back-matches in the Ulster Championship twice as a grown-up – 2013 and this year. Glory days, they’ll pass you by…

And, of course, a strong argument can be made that the unrealistic expectations have weighed teams down for many years now. What got me thinking about all of this was when a Cavan fan of long-standing described Saturday’s win over Antrim – a four-point victory over a defensive side who had beaten us five times out of the last six meetings – as “embarrassing”.

That a right-thinking person of sound mind could make such a comment with a straight face says a lot about the curious condition of the Cavan supporter, a species I believe to be unique in Irish sport and who should have his own anthropological study, in the absence of which, I will supply my own.

Firstly, the Cavan supporter doesn’t get too annoyed about the league. Oh, he’ll get excited, alright, by a good win and he’s always up for going completely buck mad about a defeat but mostly, he primes himself for the championship. The big-hitters, the traditional football heavyweights, they focus on the championship, you see. And man dear, that’s us, so it is.

After a championship match is when we see the Cavanman in one of a few easily identifiable states, each of which is instinctive. To tell the Cavanman not to feel this way would be like instructing eyes not to see nor ears to hear. Or Monaghan folk not to pronounce ‘Nudie’ and Darren’s surname as Kews. It would go against nature.

A heavy loss – any kind – or a narrow one to a middling or lower-ranked team are greeted in the same manner. Without fail, this defeat will have been the “worst ever”.

“Ah now,” the Cavanman will say, with a sharp intake of breath. “Never saw as bad. That’s the worst ever I seen.”

There are five stages to the grieving process but as a more advanced sort of human being, the Cavanman skips denial, bargaining, depression and acceptance and moves straight to anger, a process sort of like drawing the jail card in a game of Monopoly. "Do not pass Go, do not collect £200. Do not beat, say, Clare at home? Do not ever, ever – 'and I mean it this time, I’m tellin’ ya now' – go to watch them again."

Sometimes, this will boil over within a game. Exhibit A: The Cavan fan with the pitchside seat in Croke Park in the 2013 All-Ireland quarter-final who leaned in and threw his programme at a player who kicked a sideline ball back to his own goalkeeper.

Now, if Cavan draw or lose a match narrowly, it is their own fault, pure and simple.

“They threw it away,” the Cavanman will assert with the infallible air of a man whose great-grandfather won several Ulster medals. “What in the name of Jaysus was yer man at passing that ball?”

Often, you will hear the classic “they lost it on the line” in this scenario.

(It should be noted at this point that blaming the referee is all-pervasive regardless of result. Whether greeting triumph or disaster, to paraphrase Kipling, the Cavanman will treat the imposter with the whistle all the same.)

Which brings us on to wins. Should Cavan come out on top against a lower-ranked team, the reaction is muted. The Cavanman expects – no, demands is more accurate – this anyway so praise is unlikely to be forthcoming. And if elements of the play are unsatisfactory, they will be highlighted – you better believe it.

And then, Lord bless us, there is what I like to call DEFCON 1. It is that rare thing, that almost holy thing. A Cavan win against a good team, say a Division 1 outfit? All bets are off. This is when the Cavanman lets his guard down and partays like it’s 1949.

Yeah, the anger may linger a little – towards a dismissive pundit, maybe, or an opposition player who acted the pup, maybe by celebrating a score or selling a dummy – but overall, it’s an anger borne of deep satisfaction. It’s jubilation, relief and, more than anything, a sense that we have, at last, been restored to our rightful place as rulers of the Gaelic football universe.

Mickey Graham touched on it after the Antrim game last Saturday.

“Cavan, as you well know,” he said, “we have to take it one game at a time. For years and years, we have got ahead of ourselves and looked further down the line. This performance has brought our feet back firmly on the ground.”

Graham was right. For one big win is all it takes for the standing army of Cavan supporters to mobilise, parading at dawn with their moth-bitten flags, the ‘Cavan Are Magic’ stickers restored to the rear windows of the car. The last few years – 50 or so, give or take – are dismissed as a blip because, baby, we’re back!

All of these reactions were to be seen in the last fortnight alone, with relegation, a dramatic victory over Monaghan and then an unconvincing win – but still a win – against Antrim. The Cavanman has been on high doh, hi. And he doesn’t know fully what to make of it.

So where are we now? Well, here’s an exercise you could try. Take a poll of Cavan supporters and see how many think the county will win the Anglo-Celt Cup this year. By think, I mean they truly believe it, as in they would publicly profess it, knowing well the reaction will be “would ya listen to yon eegit” among other unprintable mutterings.

The reality is that while we all hope for it and some of us dream about it, not many can honestly believe it is really going to happen this month. And that’s fair enough.

Yet what will the response of these same supporters be if the team loses to Down on Sunday? I think you know the answer!

Never change, Cavanman...