'Next time, the M3 will be bumper to bumper with CN regs'

Cavanman's Diary

Saturday morning in the capital and we went for a wander. Temple Bar, Capel St and on to Henry St, thronged with shoppers. There was a buzz about the place.

With a friend, I ate a fry-up in the open air outside a café near Smithfield Square. It was strangely mild for December. A sign, we wondered? And then we snapped out of it. This wasn’t a day to be relying on omens.

The Dubs eat nostalgia and superstitions and all that malarkey for breakfast, like us with our rashers as the Luas rattled past us down Benburb St. They would be primed and ready (the Dubs, not the rashers, which were good too, I must say).

Then again, walking the streets of Dublin, aside from a quick céilí in the Boar’s Head, you wouldn’t know there was a football match on at all. Not a flag fluttering nor a bunting billowing. I saw no jerseys, overheard no snatches of conversation speculating about match-ups, would Faulkner pick up Con and who’d mark Thomas and so on.

Of course, the usual regiments of Cavan fans had not marched on the capital so that explained that but for the locals? This was business as usual.

And, on the field, that’s just how it turned out. The five-time defending All-Ireland champions just play the game differently – they work patterns, take the right options and the quality of the athletes at their disposal means they make difficult things look easy.

They marry this to a work-rate which, no matter how well they had prepared for it, seemed to surprise Cavan. Dublin arrive on the scene like a Mafia hit squad, mob-handed, strip the ball and make their getaway with barely a murmur. The effectiveness of this tactic is chilling.

And yet, for long spells, Cavan dodged the bullets fairly well. They started brightly, faded but still went in at half-time in touch. They made bold changes, sprung players from the bench early. They can be content that they went for it.

Could they have done things differently? Sure. The obvious one was to feed the bear on the square more often but the thing was, he was caged in, Murchan, Fenton and Co each doing their shift as a guard.

While there wasn’t a breath of wind blowing in from the Liffey in the morning, the day got colder as it went on. By the time of throw-in, our perch high in the Hogan Stand was freezing. I was glad of the fingerless gloves I picked up on Moore St.

Down below, at pitch level, though, it may not have been so bad. Certainly, an airy and beautifully-manicured Croke Park, even in December, is a world away from the claustrophobic environs of Ulster, where Cavan excelled on pitches that were just that bit heavier and just that bit tighter. It was winter football, for sure; here on Jones’s Road, the Dubs played as if the sun was on their backs.

Early on, Cavan seemed comfortable. James Smith won the throw-up and fed Martin Reilly for a great point – the first of his three – and 10 minutes in, it was still level, with Cavan giving as good as they got.

But as the first half wore on, the visiting side – even though they had been awarded the ‘home’ dressing-room – started to show signs of distress, making errors that they wouldn’t normally.

Part of that could have been because they were feeling the pace – “they’re bolloxed! Push up!” one Dublin player could be heard bellowing about 25 minutes in – and part was that, undoubtedly, the concentration levels were not what they had been in the Ulster final.

That is not a criticism. Cavan had been building towards that assault on the Ulster Championship for the guts of a decade. In a footballing sense, it was life or death against Donegal. Careers were on the line.

Fast forward just 13 days and no matter what happened against Dublin, this year was going to be hailed a glorious success. Under those conditions, it is almost impossible to reach the same level of ferocity, of wanton desire to eke out the win. The following day, in the fog, Tipp found that out, too.

There was certainly a sense of Cavan having reached the end of the first part of a journey when they won Ulster. Playing the match at Croke Park was the right thing to do, too. Realistically, Cavan were very unlikely to beat Dublin this time but taking them on at HQ was the best possible preparation for when they might do it some time in the future.

The result on Saturday was more or less incidental. With the Anglo-Celt Cup gleaming on the dresser, this was all about the experience and how it played out will benefit Cavan.

There was no shock-and-awe offensive by the home side; the death they inflicted was prolonged and didn’t seem as violent for that. Without the usual savage mutilation, Cavan should avoid being scarred as other teams have. Should they make it back to that stage, they will have a better idea of how to cope.

Cavan made a succession of unforced errors in the first half which is common at Croker, where teams clearly get spooked by the five-time defending champions. Padraig Faulkner mentioned as much afterwards; that Cavan were disappointed not to be much closer at the break.

That spoke to their ambition. They gave it a good go and though they came up short, the medium term future looks bright.

In all, 11 players aged 22 or under made match day panels across the five championship games. Goalkeeper Ray Galligan – an All-Star in waiting, surely – and Martin Reilly are 33 but are playing as well as ever. Gearoid McKiernan and Niall Murray are 30; there is a large group, then, in their mid-20s.

This Cavan side are in their prime and the experience and confidence of this season means that championship specialist Graham should get a good tune out of them for a few more years to come.

After 1997, there were a number of disruptive factors. Star players retired, the manager stepped down, a new bainisteoir didn’t last for one reason or another. A golden opportunity was squandered. That won’t happen this time.

There are no guarantees in sport but we are fairly hopeful on this: Cavan will be back on Jones’s Road before too long and hopefully, next time, it will be in high summer and the M3 will be bumper to bumper with CN regs, as it should be.

And, with any luck, the fingerless gloves will be left back in Virginia, too…