‘It’s the happy times, the fun and the camaraderie’ - Co Cavan RFC still growing, 50 years on

Feature

Co Cavan Rugby Football Club will celebrate their 50th anniversary with a special gala night tomorrow (Sat, November 30). PAUL FITZPATRICK spoke to the club’s first capain, Peter Pollock, to hear the story of how it all started.

When the Gaelic footballers arrived to his door, Peter Pollock admits with a smile, he was at a loss to know what they wanted.

It was 1974 and Pollock, an accomplished player with Longford Rugby Club, was, to use the parlance, blindsided to see two prominent members of Cavan Gaels come calling. Soon, though, PJ Carroll and Tony Dunne spelled out their idea and Peter was sold.

“I remember clearly when the guys came out, I knew them but not particularly well, but I knew them as Cavan Gaels lads. I was wondering, ‘what do these guys want’? And they told me, to my astonishment, that they wanted to start a rugby club in Cavan!” remembers Pollock, 50 years on.

Tony and the late PJ, who sadly passed away last month, were members of staff in the Anglo-Celt and renowned football players and coaches but, says Pollock, “both were sportsmen, they had an interest in all sports”.

Peter takes up the story.

“Tony and PJ approached me with a view to starting up a rugby club. I was playing in Longford at the time and I was fairly happy playing with Longford, but I said, ‘We’ll give it a go and see what happens.’

“They came out a couple of times, they were fairly persistent and adamant that they wanted to get it off the ground, so I agreed to go along with them. There was another man in the town who I knew played rugby before, a fella called Ken Ruddock, so we got Ken on board and the four of us sat down and decided on a couple of things – what we’d call the club, the colours we’d have, and so on.

“We then put an ad in the Celt and had a meeting in the Lakeland Hotel to see if there was any interest among people in the area to play rugby. And there was – a lot of people came to that meeting, around 30 people turned up, and then we went and had a training session out in St Patrick’s College - they very kindly loaned us their playing field to have a training session there. And that was how it started.”

St Pat’s was a Gaelic football bastion and, with the GAA’s infamous ban not long dropped, it may have been the first rugby training session held at the school. Regardless, the fledgling team trained that evening and soon, they were playing matches.

“I remember, when we had the guys at training that night, I asked if anybody had played rugby before, and I think one fella put his hand up, so we had a blank canvas, as it were, to work on,” Peter recalls.

“What we decided to do was arrange games with surrounding clubs away, and then we’d look at guys. I’d be playing on the field, and Ken Ruddock was coaching at the time. We looked at guys to see who might be showing potential.

“There was a lot of publicity generated by Tony and PJ in the Celt and we very quickly got a lot of guys starting to appear out of the woodwork, and very, very quickly we became a reasonably good side and quite competitive.

“We then got permission from both the IRFU, the Ulster Branch, and Leinster to temporarily play in Leinster because it was alien in Cavan (to play on Saturdays) and a lot of guys were working on Saturdays. Plus, you had the political situation in Northern Ireland – crossing the border at night mightn’t have been great.”

At first, the new team were met with open arms in Leinster but, quite soon, they became ‘too good for their own good’ and over-stayed their welcome, Peter jokes.

“We had that for a couple of seasons, and we won the 2nds Towns Cup then in ‘77/’78, under the captaincy of George Crowe, the local butcher here. But that was the last year we played in Leinster, and then we went back to, if you like, our rightful place in Ulster, and we’ve been there ever since.

“Winning that was huge. When we started off first, we were very, very welcome, and they were all glad to see us. But when we started to beat teams - and some of the fancied teams - then the tide turned a wee bit!

“That year we won the Towns Cup, we had to play all our games away. They wouldn’t allow us to play any home games, which wasn’t really great. But it was a great incentive, and we travelled over 1,000 miles in that, and we won it – we beat the Curragh in Mullingar.

“It was a huge achievement. We were playing in the North-Eastern Leagues, and the same season, the firsts and seconds both won their leagues, so it was quite a successful year for us. But ironically, it was our last year in Leinster.”

The next step was to enter the Ulster competitions, which meant long journeys on Saturdays up north and a lot of commitment, but soon, Cavan were making waves.

“We found our feet fairly quickly and started to win league competitions. We won our first Forster Cup in Ravenhill under the captaincy of Cyril O’Keeffe, a good Drumalee man, a couple of years after that. We’ve done fairly well in Ulster over the years since then.”

Aside from becoming the first captain, Peter filled many other roles. He had played at a good level with both Navan and Enniskillen before, with Saturdays not particularly suiting him, switching to Longford, which was where he was plying his trade when Dunne and Carroll made their approach.

Raised in Swellan (“just a kick of a ball from where the grounds are now”), he was secretary of Co Cavan RFC for 12 years and refereed for the Ulster Branch for a further 15 – and he holds the distinction of captaining five teams in Cavan, namely the firsts, the seconds twice and the thirds twice.

It was all hands on deck in those early years. A team registered and going well, the club needed a pitch.

“The Land Commission had the land and we made plans to see could we buy a bit of it from them. Fortunately, the Minister for Lands at the time was Tom Fitzpatrick, he was a local Cavan-Monaghan TD, and we did a bit of lobbying there. Eventually, we got to buy the ground that we have now, for £13,000.

“We then decided that we’d build a clubhouse on it. Then, when we had the clubhouse built, we reckoned we could generate some income from running socials there, and that helped us to build the actual pitches.

“We had applied for a licence to run a full bar. Prior to that, we used to run functions in the Farnham Hotel, and that allowed us to gather up a few pounds, and that helped us to build the clubhouse.”

And the rest is history. Over the years, Co Cavan RFC has developed its facilities and, on the playing side, continues to compete strongly, fielding teams at juvenile and adult levels for males and females. It has come a long way, then, in five decades.

“There were a lot of good people who came along and left their mark on it, as Presidents and players – a lot more than me,” says Peter modestly.

“They put a lot of effort into it, and each year they’d move it on a wee bit further down the road. It’s nice to have played a small part in developing the club, but there were a lot of other people who also played leading roles in it.

“A lot of the guys who I knocked around with and played with are gone now unfortunately, but it’s great to be able to still be around. I still go up on a Saturday for the home games and maybe have a pint or two with some of the lads, watch the rugby, and enjoy it. I say thank God I’m still here to see it and appreciate it.”

A long association with a club and a sport is bound to produce many cherished memories but, put on the spot, it’s the friendships and fun that stand out for Peter.

“There are so many. Basically, Cavan Rugby Club gave me an opportunity to travel to places I could never have dreamed of, but perhaps most importantly, it gave me an opportunity to meet a whole range of people I never ordinarily would have met, many of whom are still my friends today.

“I think, from that point of view, it’s the happy times, the fun, and the camaraderie. Playing in cup finals – I played in a cup final in Drogheda, and that was a great occasion. But the friendships that I made over the years were the best part of it.

“I was privileged to meet some wonderful people, and I still know them and value their friendship.”