A picture paints a thousand words

Cavanman's Diary

The caption is perfunctory; five short words. “Cavan fans during the game” is all it says, plus the date and the fixture – the 1995 Ulster Senior Football Championship final.

You’ll see the photo on this page. I came across it not too long ago and studied it at length. How many faces are in this image? A thousand maybe? I don’t know any of them but I feel like I know them all. This is the Cavan I grew up in, for better, for worse.

At first glance, it’s a riot of colour. On closer inspection, some things jump out, things we don’t see much any more, or at all, at championship football matches.

For example, there are dozens of flags visible. There is actually one interesting flag to the right of centre, which seems to bear the colours of the tricolour with a hefty dash of blue. That tradition has almost expired. And, most strikingly, the people are engaged, exultant, beaming, just having a good time.

Some details I’ve noticed – you will see more. In the left foreground is a man whose face is obscured. He wears a plain green baseball cap, emblazoned with ‘IRELAND’. He is a Cavan supporter, going by the blue and white woollen band around his neck and the fact that, on zooming in close, ‘An Cabhán’ and the old GAA crest is visible on his white polo shirt.

He’s wearing a wedding ring and a gold wristwatch with a leather strap and the reason his face is not clear is that he is leaning his head down slightly and holding an old-style portable transistor radio to his ear. It’s notable that he is wearing a watch; this was in the pre-smartphone era and almost every person in the photo whose wrists are visible has one on.

In the front, a man wears a white baseball cap with USA in red lettering and the five-ringed Olympic logo. Where did he get that cap? Was he home from America on holiday? The mass return of Irish emigrants, a feature of the Celtic Tiger, had yet to begin.

Beside him is a girl, probably a teenager, in a replica Cavan jersey; her cap seems to bear the crest of Blackburn Rovers, a provincial club funded by a local boy made good who had won the English Premier League earlier that year but, three decades on, have slid back into relative obscurity.

Next to her, a lady wears a white shirt with deep lapels and a waistcoat; line dancing attire, it appears. That craze was in its infancy back then and it remains popular in rural Ireland.

Looking over his shoulder is a young man with a blue polo shirt bearing the old Cavan GAA crest (borrowed, I believe, from the Urban District Council) and the words ‘Reasons, Ballyjamesduff’, a very popular bar at the time.

A large proportion of the crowd are sporting headwear, many of them wearing flimsy blue and white flat caps wit emblazoned again with the old GAA crest and CAVAN in block capitals. I imagine the photographer has issued a rallying cry of sorts because the people in the foreground seem to be cheering raucously and waving hands and flags and this flurry of activity has attracted attention from those around them, many of whom are looking in their direction, grinning.

In the centre, one man is holding forward his match programme in the style of a member of a boxer’s entourage, who enters the ring triumphantly showing off a championship belt. The page he’s holding forward to the photographer is, of course, the one listing the Cavan team. This is us, he’s saying - the words on this page – the players, the clubs, the team - are the reason why we’re here.

The crowd is exclusively caucasian and predominantly male but, surprisingly, there are very few moustaches; maybe that trend had run its course by then. Some of the older gents are wearing white shirts with the sleeves rolled up; at least two are sporting ties. The mood seems jovial; no-one looks stern.

To the right, two Tyrone men – one with a red and white woollen wristband, the other in the Arsenal jersey of the era – are laughing uproariously.

One man – there’s always one – has gone the whole hog, donning a Cavan jersey, a blue and white garment of some kind on his head, held in place with a sort of makeshift headband on which he has daubed CAVAN. Draped around his shoulders is a blue and white scarf, which falls down in front in the style of a priest’s stole. This man strikes me as the cardinal of the Cavan fans on this occasion.

This photo is part of a series taken by Ray McManus from Sportsfile. Another shows a crowd of a few dozen, mainly bedecked in the red and white of Tyrone, watching proceedings from a neighbouring hill; in front of them sit more fans, neatly seated on the wall of a stadium, tucked in cosily behind the rolls of razor wire. That wouldn’t happen now, either – not since Covid anyway.

For me, this photograph should be hanging in a gallery somewhere. I don’t think I have seen as clear an image, with such colour, concerning this county. I tried to think of a title for it – ‘Section F’ (note the small sign to the right) is the best I can come up with. It sounds vaguely medical, like a procedure or the name assigned to a ward in an asylum!

The most striking sense I get from the picture is that this is a lively crowd and they’re revelling in the abandon of the occasion - and that’s how I remember crowds at matches in those days, which is in stark contrast to the funereal atmosphere at times, even in championship games. At the Cavan v Monaghan match, several of the national media commented that things were so deathly quiet that they could hear Raymond Galligan’s instructions to his players very clearly, even up in the press box at the back of the stand.

Tom MacIntyre wrote about this day in the sun-drenched high summer of ‘95 on the front page of this newspaper -“Are we starting to learn to enjoy ourselves, I wondered?” – and, as usual, summed it up evocatively.

“The din of the fair,” he reported, “was rising.”

The din doesn’t rise any more for these occasions. There are a lot more of us but fewer go to games; when they do, they mostly sit politely, check their phones, chat to their neighbour.

I think that’s the reason why this photograph, humorous as it is in ways, is kind of sad, too; I feel a pang of nostalgia looking at it, even though I was only 11 that year. There’s a wildness there that has undoubtedly been lost in the decades since. In the background, to the right, 10 or 12 men sit perched on the roof of the television gantry. If someone tried to scale that now, what would happen? I think we all know. Wildness is not the done thing any more, on or off the pitch. It’s safety first, all the way. That’s progress.

Thirty Ulster Championships on, are we better or worse off? I think we all know that one, too.