Opinion: Cavan at a crossroads as massive campaign beckons

Opinion

The next few months could dictate how the next few years will go for this Cavan team, writes PAUL FITZPATRICK.

Would the real Cavan senior football team please stand up?

Given the highs and lows of the last 15 months, it is extremely difficult to evaluate just where Cavan are at. Based on winning the Ulster Championship in 2020 and having beaten Monaghan (twice), Donegal, Armagh, Antrim and Down in championship football in the last two and a half years, the Blues should be highly ranked.

Based, though, on the other eight teams in the province all boasting a higher league status, Cavan could be near the bottom of the pecking order, especially when half of that eight are actually three divisions higher.

The truth, probably, is somewhere in the middle and whether this group, the leading members of which have played lots of football in the top two divisions and have achieved their goal of winning an Ulster title, have the appetite for the battle from the lowest rung of the ladder will decide their future.

The sense is that they do – and key to that is that Cavan are nowhere near as far off the pace as their league standing would suggest and have a huge amount in their favour. For one thing, no major rebuilding job is required, which by definition means that the ‘bottoming out’ was something of an illusion.

Exhibit A in the case for the defence is that only a handful of teams in Ireland are more seasoned – when Cavan have everyone available, the average appearances will be around the 70 mark – and while some talented club players are still not willing to commit, the issue of defections is nowhere near as serious as it was a few years back.

Cavan have retained their best players for another season and are no longer starting the fight with one hand tied behind their backs. Of the 26 players used in five championship matches in 2020, 23 remain on the panel at present and the three not involved have started two championship games between them.

The signs from the McKenna Cup were encouraging. Performances moreso than results are the aim in that competition but if there is one scalp that is prized, it is that of Tyrone – even more so now that they wear the crown of All-Ireland champions for the fourth time.

Any win over Tyrone is worth savouring for Cavan, regardless of the prevailing conditions, in this case the fact that the Red Hands fielded a weakened team and were, to quote Mickey Graham, “probably still in holiday mode”.

Yet the margin of victory, and the fact that Cavan did not ease off even when the game was won, was particularly instructive. There was a bit of spite about Graham’s men; they had suffered more at the hands of Tyrone than any other county and were keen to drive it home when they got the chance.

That spoke to a team who have got their hunger back and are determined to right some wrongs. It appears Cavan have the bit between their teeth at present but, then again, that’s as it should be and as it must be; the stakes are high. Given their age profile, with the vast majority not old players but much closer to the end than the beginning, the next few months could well dictate how the next few years play out.

The immediate goal? Easy. A failure to gain promotion from Division 4 would be disastrous, worse even than landing there in the first place.

The spectre of Wicklow still hangs over this team.

Excuses could be made for relegation but not that play-off loss. In a regular seven-game league, it is unlikely Cavan would have gone down, with a hypothetical win against any one of Offaly, Limerick and Tipperary possibly keeping them up.

Cavan lost by a point to Fermanagh, two to Derry, beat Longford and then came the catastrophic loss to a very poor Wicklow wide in Páirc Tailteann. Like a fancied race horse tailing off 20 lengths behind the field, it was just too bad to be true.

Only it was true. It brings to mind the scene in Goodfellas where Joe Pesci’s character gets whacked and a wiseguy tells Robert De Niro, “He’s gone. And there was nothing we could do about it.”

There was a finality to it and it was made worse because there were no positives whatsoever to take from that defeat. It was careless; in football terms, it was criminal.

In the past, Cavan have lost games they were expected to win but there was usually some glimmer of comfort to take from them, be it the opposition having played well above themselves or having a couple of useful forwards who weren’t previously on the radar or a series of unlucky incidents or some such reason.

None of that applied against Wicklow. It was the only game Wicklow won all year and they subsequently slumped to defeat in the championship against a Wexford side who had lost both their Division 4 games, to Waterford and Carlow.

It would be very hard to argue that it was not the worst loss in Cavan’s history; some will point to the Waterford defeat in 2006 but at least that one was for promotion.

And the most sickening thing for all involved, not least the players and management, is that it came so soon after the long-awaited Ulster Championship breakthrough. Those medals were hard and honestly won – to come from the preliminary round, beating two Division 1 sides, playing week on week, there may never have been a harder won Ulster title, in fact – but being relegated took the shine off them.

The fact that Tipperary, who won the Munster title on the same day Cavan won Ulster, were also demoted was an unfortunate piece of symmetry which added to the prevailing narrative that Cavan just got lucky; it was a freakish championship which produced freakish results, or so the story goes.

It’s not true, in the slightest, and it must sicken the players and management to hear it being said.

That, though, is where the pride kicks in. We chatted to one Cavan player last week, floating the idea of an interview, but he respectfully declined, citing the need to “keep the head down” and focus entirely on the opening round of the league.

So, Cavan are sore about last year and so they should be. Nothing short of promotion will do – and the focus will then turn to the championship where a win over Antrim is an absolute must as well.

The question then becomes whether or not the talent is there to win another Ulster Championship. It is – but at least five teams will be saying the same. If everyone is fit, the defence and midfield is formidable but doubts remain over Cavan’s firepower, with seven or eight young forwards seeking to establish themselves.

There are a wave of young players on the panel who find themselves in a curious position because of Covid; several are in their third or even fourth seasons and some have Ulster medals yet have played very little. Most are forwards and if a couple can emerge as reliable scorers and even one can reach a level above that, Cavan will be well on their way.

But time is running out. The championship starts in 12 weeks; each week that passes and every match between now and then will be massive.

If Cavan fail to get out of the basement and to make a big splash in the championship in 2022, the Ulster-winning team will likely begin to break up; the juice will no longer be worth the squeeze for a committed group of very talented players who have devoted so many years to the cause.

It doesn’t take too vivid an imagination, however, to envisage them rampaging through Division 4, picking up a trophy and carrying momentum into championship. The next couple of weeks will tell us more but whatever way we look at it, this team is at a crossroads. It will be fascinating to watch which path they take, starting in Carrick-On-Shannon this Sunday.