Published: Wednesday, 23rd December, 2009 5:00pm

Reilly in pledge to clubs

The newly-installed chairman of Cavan county board Tom Reilly has sent a strong festive message to the clubs of Cavan, pledging to end what he calls the "us and them" mentality.

"The message I'd send out is one of goodwill first and secondly, that we've turned the corner and it's up from here for Cavan but I want us all to come up together," Reilly told The Anglo-Celt.

"I want us all to be together in this and if we all work together we can get to where we want to go.

"Expectations shouldn't be too high, but you have to have expectations too. I want to get hope and pride back into Cavan and not this thing of talking ourselves down all the time."

Reilly intends to focus on empowering the clubs, he said.

"I have got a great response, I have got a great feeling of expectations, which hopefully I can live up to. I want to get out there to the grassroots and I'll be concentrating on that," stated the Shannon Gaels clubman.

"I want to get the clubs right first, I want to get them thinking properly, that it's not "us and them". That's a big thing for me. I found in the campaign that there was an awful divide there and I want to eliminate that.

"I'm going to contact the clubs on a regular basis myself to see how things are going. I'm actually going to contact every club this week to wish them happy Christmas and new year. Not text or anything like that, a personal phone call, that's what I'll be doing."

Reilly intends to travel around the county and meet with club officials.

"I need to go to the clubs, too," he said.

"My target is to make as many club matches as I can and when I go to a match, I'll be ringing them and telling them that if the committee wants to meet me, I'll meet them. That's the way I'll be operating for the first six months anyway."

Reilly has begun a process of restructuring the board, having appointed Lacken Celtic's Pauric Mahon, a former board vice-chairman under George Cartwright, as head of the CCC.

"I have been given the power under the bye-laws to select the CCC, but I wasn't happy with that and what I have done is sent and email to the clubs and ask them to nominate people from which I will select the committee to get a good cross-section, rather than me picking four of my buddies. I'm not into that."

Current vice-chairman Kieran Callaghan (Denn), who had chaired the CCC, will now work more closely as Reilly's "right-hand man".

"The vice-chairman of the board will be in charge of Breffni Park and he'll be looking after the full-time employees, that will be his role.

"I need Kieran to help me as chairman, to be right up beside me because it's too much work for one man. I can't be four places at the one time. Kieran will be an excellent fella to lead Breffni Park. People in high places are expecting officers of the county boards to be in charge of these things and I'm putting a lot of emphasis on it, he'll by my second in command there."

On the coaching front, Reilly has instructed the full-time county board coaches to go out to clubs and hopes to have five Level One coaches in each club by May of next year, while working off some of the county board's debt is a priority, he said.

"I will be prioritising things like paying off our debts and areas such as that...I believe that the county team is out of my hands for the moment and I won't be interfering there. There are three [county team] managers in place and they can work away and we'll see how it goes. That's further down the road and by their performances, they'll retain or they'll go."

The role of chairman, said Reilly, is a huge challenge.

"It's an enormous job and I'd like to get the first county board meeting over and the league structure sorted out. I don't want to see teams where they might be too strong, I want every team at their own level," he said.

"People of Cavan are looking forward to a new year and a new time. Things are not as bad as they are made out to be. The campaign is over and I've started to work and it will take a while for people to get used to my ways."

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