A massive result for Cavan but the real fun only starts now

End to End: Opinion

One win doesn’t make a season but the manner of Cavan’s victory suggests they may have turned a corner, writes PAUL FITZPATRICK.

In the Leitrim Observer last week, Sports Editor John Connolly, who has been covering football in the county for 35 years, touched on something. Leitrim, missing 20 players from last year’s squad, are down bodies and up a division. They’ve been finding the going extremely tough.

“You only had to look at the ashen faces and shaking heads of Leitrim fans to understand that what they witnessed on Saturday was almost a form of trauma,” Connolly wrote.

That may sound dramatic on first reading but for our money, it’s spot on. In a county like Leitrim, or Cavan, when you haven’t got much else to pin your hopes on and send out to represent the people of the county, with respect to other teams and individual sportspeople, for many, the senior footballers are the only show in town.

That is especially true in Cavan, where there is a particularly rich tradition and the county (or the older generation anyway) secretly sees itself as an aristocrat of the game, albeit one that has fallen on hard times. While there tends to be a level of apathy among the fan base and a near-comic degree of defeatism, that deep collective interest in the fortunes of the senior football team pertains and the impact their performances, good or bad, have on the collective mood should not be under-estimated. In this county, nothing moves the dial like the Cavan team moves it.

Defeats are one thing – every side wins and loses matches and as the fluid seasons wash into one, football teams, like water, will find their own level. But bad losses prompt the grim and unsettling sense that something has gone badly awry somewhere – and that it will likely get worse. It is, as Connolly wrote, about as traumatic as events can get in terms of fandom.

And that’s just for the supporters. The players, coaches and manager, of course, must banish such thoughts; they have to keep with it, trust the rest of the group, not succumb to panic. It’s like a band of hikers losing their way in the forest; to have any hope of getting out of it, they’ve got to follow the leader. After all, he or she is the only one that has been entrusted with holding the map.

That was the unenviable position the Cavan players found themselves in in the lead-up to the visit of Louth last Sunday. Two heavy defeats in local derbies had deflated the whole county and, with tricky games ahead, this was a match Cavan absolutely had to win.

Raymond Galligan demanded a response and it was forthcoming. It was a matter of pride – there comes a point in the lifespan of a team where they can either go gently into that good night or rage against it.

The last time Cavan lost the first three rounds of the league was in 2019 in Division 1 against Galway away, Kerry at home and Mayo away; those losses were excusable. Prior to that, it hadn’t happened since 2008, when Cavan lost their first four games in Division 2.

So a loss would have been a real low point in the modern history of this team. They railed against that and while they rode their luck at both ends of the field, the defiance, energy and controlled aggression they showed not only won them the game but also saved their season.

Had they lost, questions would have arisen as to whether the manager had lost the dressing-room, whether the coaching was not up to scratch or, and this is always the last thing those on the terraces want to hear, Cavan were just no longer good enough to compete in this division.

As we wrote last week, however, in football, winning is a balm for all sores. Suddenly, things have changed markedly. The hoodoo of Galligan not having won a home match is banished at last, as is the zero beside their name on the league table.

In handball, they call that – being beaten to zero – a doughnut. There’s a stigma to it; in terms of confidence, the most important point in that game is often the first one and the same can be said about Cavan, only it’s two on the board there now.

Of course, the performance was far from perfect. Cavan let Louth in too easily for goal chances and, the argument could be made, the winning of the match came down to two unforced errors from the visitors. The ball was given away too easily at times, too.

But sometimes, such things are irrelevant. There are days when winning is all that matters and Sunday was one of those. How good was the performance? It was what it needed to be – good enough.

This win came down to heart and work-rate and some smart managerial moves. For example, Jason McLoughlin was sending out distress flares early on; Galligan spotted them, got him out of the deep end and the Shannon Gaels man sailed home in calm waters, playing out of his skin for the final 50 minutes or so.

Killian Clarke and Conor Madden came on and made game-winning contributions.

James Smith and Luke Fortune – two of the mid-20s brigade whom Cavan need to step up – were excellent, playing their best stuff for a couple of seasons. Padraig Faulkner thundered into challenges as he does and emptied the tank, adding a classy point.

Dara McVeety, switched to the attack, was brilliant as a ball-winner, carrier and finisher in a Man of the Match display. Youngster Evan Crowe worked his socks off; Gary O’Rourke was rock solid in nets.

It all worked out but the fun is only starting. A large crowd is expected in Cusack Park, Mullingar on Sunday as Cavan go in search of another two points when they face the team managed by the county’s own Games Development Manager and former player and selector, Dermot McCabe.

McCabe’s boys are without a point so far but have moved fairly well; they are down several of their leading players but McCabe is getting a tune out of them. Those who have played under McCabe say his football brain is unrivalled so he will surely put his knowledge of the Cavan players to good use, making a difficult task even harder for Galligan and the Cavan camp.

Had Cavan lost to Louth, especially if the defeat was by a relatively-wide margin, it would have been hard to pick them up for Sunday’s short trip south.

Win secured, however, Galligan’s calls – back-room and panel changes, positional and personnel adjustments – are all validated and belief is replenished. Winning strengthens the circle.

Just as two losses don’t necessarily mean the year is a write-off, one victory doesn’t guarantee sunlit uplands. But it’s certainly preferable to the alternative: a trip to the rain-drenched midlands with no points on the board and more questions than answers.

Cavan didn’t lack for motivation on Sunday; they shouldn’t need to look far for it this Sunday coming, either. A big crowd is expected. An improving Cavan don’t look as brittle; Westmeath, too, are growing.

All of a sudden, things have gotten very interesting indeed.