Gowna's quest for a hat-trick will be the story of the season

Opinion

The Senior Championship, which throws in in a few weeks, will be as intriguing as ever, writes PAUL FITZPATRICK.

Maybe it’s because we’re in Cavan and our glorious run of success in football ended so abruptly but I always find it fascinating to examine how successful teams rise and fall – and how dramatic and sudden it can be.

A quirk of the Senior Football Championship scene in Cavan is that there has generally always been one dominant side, who gobble up championships. When that team breaks up, there tends to be a period of flux in which other sides can nip in and win one or two or even three championships before another emerges.

We are potentially seeing that cycle playing out before our eyes at the moment. Cavan Gaels bestrode the Senior Championship like a colossus from 2001 to 2011, appearing in every final and winning eight titles. They added two more in 2014 and 2017 but they had come back to the pack then.

In that decade post-2011, an unusually long spell in this well-established pattern, the Oliver Plunkett Cup toured the county, with Castlerahan and Ramor United winning two each, Ballinagh, Kingscourt and Mullahoran and Crosserlough also winning.

But history tells us that the emergence of a new superpower is overdue and Gowna, still a young side, look odds-on to be that team, having won the last two county finals by a combined 24 points.

Of course, the other contenders will be doing everything in their power to prise the trophy back and it wouldn’t be the greatest shock were Gowna not to do it.

A hat-trick of titles is a marvellous achievement and some of the great teams didn’t do it - the Gowna club themselves didn’t even manage it with their awesome side which won seven titles in 14 years from 1988 on – but it is far from impossible.

Since Cavan came to significant prominence at national level when the county reached its first All-Ireland final in 1928, seven clubs have managed to win three (or more) Senior Championships in succession, namely Cornafean (1932-34 and 1936-40), Mullahoran (1947-50), Cootehill Celtic (1953-55), Crosserlough (1966-72), Laragh United (1982-84), Kingscourt Stars (1989-91) and Cavan Gaels (2003-05 and 2007-09).

Before that, in the early years of the century, Drumlane Sons of O’Connell did it, too.

Each of those runs was iconic in its own right and, in ways, they tell the story of Cavan football.

“The history of club football in the county down to 1950… is largely the history of Cornafean,” wrote Fr Dan Gallogly in Cavan’s Football Story.

“They dominated football at a time when standards were high and competition was keen… They produced the kind of football that made county players.”

That is the case with each of the sides who have secured the precious treble – they became synonymous with their particular era.

There is no distinct pattern to the teams on the list – some are town clubs, some country, some perennially competing senior, others not – but the outlier is Cootehill in the sense that their three-in-a-row were the only three Senior Championship titles the club has won.

Their run started in 1953, the year after Cavan won its fifth All-Ireland. In the final that year, they easily brushed aside Mullahoran.

Cootehill retained the championship in 1954 and peaked in 1955, powered on by the scoring ability of brothers Brian and Charlie Gallagher among others. In ’55, they beat Mullahoran again to win the league title and it seemed they were close to unstoppable.

But that always seems the way, doesn’t it? The Dublin footballers were the same – until they weren’t.

On July 1, 1956, Cootehill again played Kingscourt, this time in the first round of the championship.

Having dominated the Stars so many times in the intervening period, a measure of complacency maybe had set in. Brian Gallagher was absent, away in Spain on a trip that his late brother Fr Frank, six weeks dead, had booked. There were injuries, too, and a last-minute goal sank the Celtics. Cornafean stole in and won their 20th Senior Championship. To date, neither of those famous clubs has added another. With the Championship soon coming round again, much of the intrigue will focus on the two-time defending champions and whether they can join this illustrious three-in-a-row club.

They are looking good and had a big win over Cavan Gaels in the league semi-final last week but league football always comes with a health warning. Still, Gowna are young and hungry and well-prepared and, crucially, seem to have scope for improvement.

They will start the competition as red-hot favourites and the over-riding narrative at this stage seems to be whether or not they can make it three-in-a-row. So, all of a sudden, it seems we are in the Gowna era; they are the team that defines the season at present.

But there are plenty of others nipping at their heels.

The Gaels themselves didn’t win a championship for 23 years prior to the start of their glorious run in 2001; if they don’t win it this year, they will be one third of the way there again so they will be desperate to get back to a final and get their hands on the cup.

Crosserlough, even without top scorer Paddy Lynch, will feel they simply must win another title; failure to do so would mean a side who made the final in 2018 in thrilling fashion and looked set to win multiple championships remain stuck on one.

Such is the pedigree of Kingscourt, finalists in 2020 and again last year, that they can never be ruled out, although the near-record defeat in the final last year may have left some residual scar tissue and there does seem to be a drop-off outside of their marquee players.

Ramor United, for their part, have two titles since 2016 and have never been far away in that time. Their league form has been promising, too and they will play Gowna in the final this weekend.

Killygarry, having bridged a 50-year gap to the final in 2022, would have fancied themselves but a lot can change in a short space of time in football. Up by six points against Ballinagh in the league semi-final (ludicrously, it’s possible to go unbeaten in a full campaign and not get promoted in Cavan and also to lose every game and stay up by winning a play-off), they were flying high. But then they lost and their best player, Conor Smith, went off with what looked like a nasty injury. So, there are questions there, too.

Could someone else – a Mullahoran, maybe – escape the pack and make a run at it? It seems unlikely but not impossible.

Either way, the next couple of months have the potential to provide a tonic after provincial and All-Ireland inter-county championships which managed to feel condensed and drawn out at the same time and have only been saved by a novel final pairing.

The championship opens up before us, the highlight of the football year. Can Gowna cement their place among the all-time great sides? If not, who will stop them and write their own history?

The speculation is part of the fun, maybe the biggest part. Bring it on.