COMMENT: Footballers have put a smile back on county's face
Paul Fitzpatrick looks back on a joyous afternoon for Cavan football in Kingspan Breffni Park as the senior team achieved promotion to Division 1.
Oh happy day! This was an afternoon years in the making but, finally, the Cavan senior footballers have achieved a measure of recognition for their efforts. They – this group – started at the bottom and now they’re here, heading for Croke Park with the bright lights of Division 1 twinkling on the horizon.
It took time, as the song says – a whole lot of precious time – to do it right. But the county’s investment in young players and the loyalty to a manager who has shipped more than his fair share of flak has, at long last, reaped some return.
It’s 10 years to the month since the Cavan footballers last won five successive matches in Division 2 of the National Football League. On that occasion, as we wrote earlier this week, Waterford derailed the party train; you could argue it has taken this long to get it back on track.
The Celt was in Virginia early in the day to speak with one of only five surviving members of the 1952 Cavan team, Brian O’Reilly from Mullahoran.
Brian, hale and hearty in his 85th year, played wing-back in that famous All-Ireland success and has been living in Headfort, Co Galway for over 60 years now. A decorated Cavan hero with strong Galway links – the omens were good, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Coming into town, the feeling was everywhere that this was no ordinary league match. You could tell by the traffic jam which started a couple of miles out the Dublin Rd and by the sense of excitement hanging in the air, rising like the damp as throw-in approached.
And then we were underway and within nine minutes, David Givney – whose gloves, Killian Clarke would joke later, needed checking for glue – had the ball in the Galway net.
But the Tribesmen came roaring back with a lucky, but well-finished, goal of their own. Cavan needed something special – and then Gearoid McKiernan started doing his thing.
The big Swad man tracked a defender 30 yards at one point, picked his pocket, swivelled and curled in a point. A few minutes later, he swung one in off the right foot that hung in the air and landed on the roof of the net, straight down as if it was dropped from the top floor of a skyscraper.
And as the ball dropped, the cheer rose from the heart of the stand – packed out, for the first time we can recall for a league match – and circulated around the stadium. In the Cavan body, McKiernan is the pulse. We haven’t had a player like him for the longest time.
Then again, there is class throughout the team. At the back, Clarke was awesome, ‘the Holla’ Brady brought war, Moynagh seemed to always know where the ball was going and McVeety was a sensation.
Afterwards, among the national press pack who know the game and are not easily impressed, the Crosserlough schoolteacher’s name was everywhere. McVeety delivered a lesson today.
It was a dogfight, though, not a free-wheeling thriller like the last game of the 2015 league campaign. Every ball was bitterly contested. Cavan were the better team but couldn’t shake the Tribesmen off until the end.
The subs sealed it. In other years, Eugene Keating, Cian Mackey and Niall Murray would play every minute of every game. This year, Terry Hyland has a full deck from which to choose his hand and he played it cannily today, holding back a couple of trumps.
When Keating fired over his first point, pumped his fist and screamed at the sky, thousands rose as one – but it was nothing like the sweet feeling when Murray clipped over the final score. That sealed it. Little old Cavan, written off as recently as yesterday on the airwaves, had done it.
Brian O’Reilly and the other men of 52 still with us – James McCabe, Paddy Carolan, Fr Seamus Hetherton, Johnny Cusack - can be rightly proud. Cavan will dine at the top table again and thousands will turn up for work with an extra inch to their step tomorrow morning.
For that – and not the headache the celebrations may induce – we can only say thank you. Maybe we’re getting too poetic about the whole thing but, well, it was that kind of day.
Regardless of what happens next, this team has put a smile back on the faces of the fans. And when the big house has gone silent and we reflect, isn’t that really all that matters?