An evening to savour in Dublin

Cavanman's Diary

A day of days in the big smoke. Back slaps and blue bunting on two cups.

First up were the hurlers. At one time, hurling in Cavan ranked somewhere between a rumour and a running joke but such talk has been banished. Under an Antrim manager and a Galway coach, assisted by homegrown mentors, they are expertly prepared and are the most improved inter-county side in Ireland – not hard when you consider that not long ago, they hadn’t a team at all.

They were taking on Leitrim in the league final and the entire local hurling community were out in force, their numbers swollen by a fair few football followers.

One man mentioned that he never missed a football match but this was his first time watching the small ball. It felt more like a game of football, though, in how it played out. This wasn’t a shoot-out, which hurling matches often are now and which leave some of us pining for the lower-scoring, edgier contests from the golden age of the mid-90s.

This was a battle; each score had to be quarried out of rock. The close quarter exchanges were fiercely contested. With five minutes left, even the ref pulled his hamstring.

Maybe that caused some sort of a mix-up because his replacement played an unfathomable nine minutes of injury time. The tension was unbearable as the clock just kept ticking and Cavan held on grimly to a one-point lead.

(“If we had’ve lost that, they’d have been on to a third ref,” someone said. Not that we’re encouraging vigilantism, yada yada...)

On a pristine surface on lands once owned by the Barons of Castleknock, Cavan had the Prince of Piltown to pull them through. Nicky Kenny, a Kilkenny man living in Virginia with his Bailieborough-born better half, shot seven sensational points; his county man, Canice Maher, a teacher in Mullagh, struck nine.

But a Cootehill lad came up with the winner. Rian Delaney, 18 years old, played on the minor team which won a title on the same pitch last year and here he was with the crucial score. There was Kilkenny blood there, too. Rian’s paternal grandfather, Mick, played full-forward on the last Cavan team to win a League, in 1984.

As the rain teemed down, players and mentors stood around with family and friends. We spoke briefly to some of them. County board officer John Keating, father of full-forward Sean; the Carney brothers with parents Martina and Kevin, who has covered hurling on these pages for many years and chiselled away in his own club. Shane Briody, who took up the game in his late 20s and now is the team’s resident bomb-defuser, given the job of marking the most explosive forward.

We thought of joining the cavalcade back to the Imperial but Croker was calling and there was no time to waste. Word filtered out that Jones’ Road, where the media slip in a side door to avoid rubbing shoulders with the commoners, was closed after an accident - but we managed to get parked up and in an alternative entrance with drenching minimised.

High in the Hogan, we realised – too late – that we had made the fatal mistake of not wearing warm enough clothing. Again. No matter the weather, the press box up there is always chillier than Tom Crean’s tent. Schoolboy error, ameliorated only slightly by the hot soup.

And there wasn’t much happening to warm us in the first half, either - but Cavan were a different team in the second and ran Fermanagh into the ground. Soon, Raymond Galligan was up the steps to receive another trophy.

Ray is now Cavan’s most successful Cavan captain since Charlie, who lifted the Anglo-Celt Cup in 1967 and 1969 and was also captain for the Wembley tournament success in 1968 and the McKenna Cup win the same year. And, of course, Charlie is the aforementioned Rian’s other grandfather. Sporting successes always find a way of completing the circle.

Exhibit B: In the lobby after the match, making for the exit, we ran into Pat Faulkner, former Cavan full-back and the first winner of the Supporters Club’s Player of the Year award. Pat and wife Jackie had made it home from America, with an unplanned detour via Switzerland that morning.

They only caught the last 15 minutes, son Padraig revealed afterwards, but it was Cavan’s best spell anyway. Padraig, only turning 29 (we think), had just played his 100th senior match for the county. That’s a lot of afternoons and evenings patrolling the square, walking the high wire; only a rare kind of individual could be trusted with such a job.

The thought struck me that maybe Pat was studying the Geneva Convention, the international agreement on humanitarian treatment in war time, during his layover in the Swiss city. That was one document no old school Gaelic football full-back would have had much use for but while the game has evolved, the principles of minding the house remain unchanged.

Padraig inherited the number three jersey and plays with the same gusto. Few would volunteer to mark Ultan Kelm, who had scorched Breffni Park six days earlier, but Faulkner did. And Kelm, in the end, did not – and that, as much as anything, was the winning of the cup.

Afterwards, still mad for work, we changed plans and decided to head out into the night to conduct a vox pop for the Anglo-Celt. Unfortunately, we could find no Cavan people. Given the rain and what have you, we were forced to take cover at the bottom of Capel Street – and lo and behold, there they all were, in the Boar’s Head of all places.

Mingling together were lads from Mullahoran and Arva; there were Templeports, Lackens and Crosserloughs, too, all under the one flag this time. The consensus was that the footballers had done very well, that they were primed for a big championship. There’s always one contrary voice, though (and this time, it wasn’t mine, for a change).

“I’ve heard a lot of people saying Mickey Graham should be run!” posited one supporter.

“Ah now. Who was saying that?”

“Well… Uncle Pee for one.”

In the interests of balanced journalism, as Uncle Pee wasn’t there to defend himself, I interrogated no further and filed this under ‘deep background’. The research continued in further establishments until the job was complete.

Sunday, back to base. On the M3, even the rain had given way to warm sunshine as the Kinks came on the radio. Thank you for the days...

Championship is coming; who knows where the road leads next.