Slapped again by the Red Hand of defeat

Cavanman's Diary

Driving north, the dreary steeples of Newtownbutler, Lisnaskea, Maguiresbridge looming large, there was a sense of foreboding among us, like war correspondents heading for the front line.

The news was bad. The Cavan team had been released – to the public, that is, not from some sort of gulag – and seemed fairly strong but nobody pays too much attention to the team lists inter-county managers send out into the ether and the bush wire was singing a different song.

The word crackling there was that Cormac O’Reilly and James Smith wouldn’t be fit to start and, combined with what we knew – Oisin Brady and Conor Madden also gone and Paddy Lynch still not back – it became ominously clear that Cavan could be walking into a massacre. Having been upbeat in our previews, we were now like tradesmen discovering rot in the walls – only it was too late at that stage to re-negotiate our price.

Still, my co-pilot, whose mellifluous tones you would recognise from local radio, likes to walk on the sunny side of the street, where I do my strolling in the shade.

He looked for the positives, told me to cheer up. “At least it’s a nice day,” he propagated, as the inky clouds loomed above. “God bless your optimism,” I said.

After all, this was Tyrone and the sight of the white and red signifies trauma for Cavan supporters and, I suppose, players alike. Meetings with them are filed away in the recesses of our memories alongside particularly painful trips to the dentist, recalled with a wince, a puffing out of the cheeks and a slow exhaling.

A few, for the sake of sadism. The 1995 Ulster final in Clones, Cavan people gone haywire but Mattie McGleenan punching a goal and Tyrone pulling away. The 2001 Ulster final, when half-time came at the wrong time. A boy born that summer would have been in his last year of minor by the time Cavan returned to that stage. Unthinkable.

And when we did make an Ulster final again, we lost to Donegal and, a week later, who else but Tyrone was waiting to ruin the season, to make sure that Cavan didn’t get above their station. By the time the following season came around, 10 players had left the panel.

There was a qualifier on a baking hot day in Enniskillen, an afternoon which followed a typical pattern – a big Tyrone lead, a small Cavan comeback.

We remember a Division 1 National League final in Clones, Canavan in his pomp, my cousin Michael Brides zipping up the straitjacket and padlocking him into a tea-chest – and still, the Ballygawley Houdini, wriggling free.

Another league final at Croke Park, a coiffured Cavanagh accepting the cup. A McKenna Cup game in the fog where Tyrone won 2-22 to 0-7, probably a record home defeat for us, a side-note for them. There were more. Plenty more.

A league hammering in Omagh, McGleenan now the Cavan manager - but even the outsider’s inside knowledge made no difference.

I think of 2016; Cavan had assembled maybe their strongest panel in 20 years, a rare blend of power and class. Tyrone were said to be in transition. We met them four times that year; Cavan won none. What is it about Tyrone?

Since 2013, when Cavan started to come up in the football world after the squandermania of the boom, we have beaten every other county in Ulster at least once. But not them. Never them.

That county, in some ways, is a state of mind. They’re wired differently. Remember Darren McCurry on the pitch after winning the All-Ireland final, telling a reporter, with a straight face, “I just had to get myself back to Dazzler”, like it was a real place, maybe a Vegas nightclub or something.

While Cian Reilly battled well, as it turned out McCurry was in the VIP section on Sunday – not that many were there to see it. Twenty years ago, Cavan and Tyrone drew 25,094 to Clones for an Ulster semi-final replay (Tyrone won by 21 points, need you ask).

Last year, a crowd of just under 10,000 for the same fixture (Tyrone won in extra time) was considered paltry. This time, it was 6,791. The prognosis has been poor for some time but, in the 100th year of the Anglo-Celt Cup, the Ulster Championship is in its diminished last days and somehow, this is considered a good thing for the sport. Shame.

So, it didn’t feel like championship but then again, how could it? Championship means summer and high-wire matches, not an April safety net.

In the days leading up to it, aside from a long-suffering Cavanman from Leaguer country whom I encountered at Paul Brady’s handball match in Sligo on Friday evening, nobody – not one person – asked me my thoughts on the match or put forward their own. The game no longer lights that flame, it seems; more Cavan and Tyrone people were invested in the Masters golf.

Still, we hoped. This team bring to mind the apocryphal story of a former President of St Patrick’s College who, when asked to write a reference for an unruly former student, noted that he was “capable of anything”. So, we clung to that blind faith but when Cavan were greeted on to the field by an apologetic whimper, it was sad to see. The first half was like a challenge game. Tyrone looked fitter, smarter, hungrier.

At half-time, a woman from a radio station – and fair play to her for trying to whip up some excitement - patrolled the pitch with what she termed her “infamous t-shirt gun”.

“I’m going to make my way round the whole entire pitch both sides and whenever you see me, if you would like some free merch, I need you to cheer as loud as you can. Can we do that?” she asked over the loud-hailer.

In response, the crowd murmured gently.

“That’s pathetic, can we try that again?” she cajoled, with a hilariously forthright turn of phrase.

But pathetic it was, in every sense. Cavan had the wind in the second half but they didn’t have McKiernan, who had picked up an injury. That was that, a depressing day complete.

En route home, we took the Fintona road, over the mountain. As we approached a bend, a cocky black cat crossed our path, swaggering like a Tyrone footballer.

My passenger and I spoke simultaneously.

“More bad luck,” I asserted, swerving to avoid the native.

“A black cat!” he cried, “at least that’s some good luck today.”

We laughed. It’s all about how you look at it, I suppose.