Fans should take stock of where we are — and adjust expectations accordingly

Cavan’s run from 2006-2012 was quite possibly the worst in their history — and the stats don’t lie, writes PAUL FITZPATRICK.

Two weeks out from the big one and some parts of the team are taking shape with the news that Alan Clarke will be captain, and Damien O’Reilly vice-captain, for the upcoming championship.

If nothing else, it exposes the folly of the past, when the Kingscourt man — whose “core competency” as they say in the business world is strength, not speed — was played out of position at corner-back and then allowed drop off the panel altogether.

The management seem to be getting things together, even if they suffered a huge blow with the loss of Gearoid McKiernan, but talk that, with home advantage, Cavan will see off Armagh is dangerous.

Let’s put this “Fortress Breffni” guff to bed for a start.

Our recent home record is awful. Playing in Breffni Park is no longer the advantage it once was and bar the Tommy Carr era, when a fairly solid home record was about all Cavan had to cling to, we have been ransacked in our own castle far too many times.

In the past two championships, Cavan have lost in Breffni Park to Donegal twice, Kildare and Longford by an average of almost 11 points, conceding 8-66 (in four games!) and scoring 3-38.

Losing four successive home matches in the championship is not an aberration — it is, we’re sad to say, a trend, and trends are hard to break. Going purely on the stats, the Cavan team of the past two years could be the worst the county has ever turned out.

Because, when we study the facts, Cavan have never had a comparable run to the one of the last seven years. It is the lowest point on a graph which has generally hovered between outstanding and respectable.

A brief trawl through the record books is revealing. Everyone is familiar with the Cavan successes of the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, and the team of the ’60s, of course, was a fabulous one, beating the reigning All-Ireland champions in two Ulster finals, narrowly losing All-Ireland semi-finals by two points (’67) and after a replay (’69).

But the oft-ignored team of the ’70s, by modern-day standards, was exceptional too. An excellent outfit, built on the Hogan Cup and Ulster minor-winning sides of ’72 and ’74, reached two Ulster finals in three years between ’76 and ’78, losing in extra time of a replay to Derry in ’76 and trouncing Armagh, the ’77 All-Ireland finalists, in the first round in ’78 before losing the final to Down.

They were back in an Ulster final in ’83, losing by four points to Donegal and while the ’88-94 period was a poor one, without a championship win, at least there were encouraging performances, such as holding eventual All-Ireland champions Donegal to a draw in the first round in ’92. And Cavan were consistently competing at the highest grade in league football at the time, too, running Dublin close in a Division 1 semi-final in 1989.

And of course in ’95 they were back in the Ulster final and two years later, were Ulster champions for the first time in 28 years.

In 2001, Cavan ran Tyrone to three points in an Ulster final, the following year reached the Division 1 National League decider and in 2005, drew with would-be All-Ireland winners Tyrone before beating Donegal and Meath in the qualifiers en route to the last 12.

The seven campaigns since then, however, must surely rank as the worst run in the county’s history. In that period, Cavan have won just four championship matches from 18.

And luck, or the lack of it, wasn’t a factor either — just once were Cavan beaten by a point during the run (Kildare in 2008) and on only one other occasion (Fermanagh in 2010) was the margin under four points.

The average defeat came by an average which is quite shocking – 7.3 points. For the record, the margins of their 14 defeats were as follows: five (points), five, five, six, four, one, six, seven, three, 18, nine, 11, six, 17.

Exactly seven of the 14 losses have come at home, with six away and one (Antrim in 2010) on neutral ground in Clones. Donal Keogan’s reign was the best of recent times but still only yielded one championship win.

Why do we bring this up? Unless Cavan learn from the past, they are doomed to repeat it. It is no coincidence that there were five different senior managers over the seven championship seasons (Martin McElkennon, Donal Keogan, Tommy Carr, Val Andrews, Terry Hyland).

Surely the lesson from that is that Cavan need stability and must persist with the current management team through thick and thin from here on in.
What the past seven years shows us, too, when viewed in the light of the historical trend, is that Cavan will rise again. Did the county just cast aside its tradition and resources at the end of the 2005 season?

Of course not. Recent seasons are the exception, and not the norm, in Cavan’s proud footballing history and it is inevitable that we will see the old order return at some stage.

That is if all stakeholders show patience and the right decisions are made. Terry Hyland has had a full year in the job now and the team showed signs of progress in the league, earning almost double the points tally they did the previous year and, frustratingly, easily beating both promoted teams.

The rebuilding job begins on May 19 against Armagh. Progress, a step on the road to recovery, will be to buck the trend, established, remember, over 14 matches and seven seasons, of losing games by over seven points.

A win over Armagh would be a magical boost but a respectable showing and a couple of qualifier wins would, as our research shows, be a vast improvement on recent years.

And that would be a start.