Cavan fans finally get their chance to 'bring the noise'

Cavanman's Diary

Before Cavan played Donegal in the 2020 Ulster final, I wrote a piece on these pages headed “Ignore the noise – Cavan have a huge chance in this final”.

Most of the pundits thought otherwise and presumably dismissed any such talk as parochialism, which wasn’t entirely unfair. Donegal had, after all, been much better than Cavan in the previous year’s Ulster final and won a lot more comfortably than the eventual scoreline (1-24 to 2-16) would suggest.

A few days after the game, Malachy Clerkin of the Irish Times, a Monaghan man but otherwise a good skin, tweeted jokingly: “I tell you solemnly that he wasn’t ignoring the noise when Madden’s goal went in. He WAS the noise!”

Malachy, Declan Bogue, Mark McGowan – a Donegal native now living in these parts who has written the analysis pieces on these pages in the last two years – and a few other reporters were in the vicinity of Cian Mackey – on radio duty -  and I when Gearoid McKiernan delivered that long ball, Shaun Patton punched it and Conor Madden reacted quickest and hit the onion bag for the second year in a row in the Ulster final.

I know we were in the midst of a lockdown but it was almost impossible to suppress a most powerfully felt emotion to bear-hug the nearest Cavan person you could find, which is how myself and Mackey ended up engaging in an impromptu and entirely unprofessional celebratory tango. But that was the moment that the few dozen Cavan people in the Athletic Grounds knew that the Anglo-Celt Cup was coming home and it is one that I will never forget.

The shame was that no Cavan supporters were allowed attend that Ulster final or any of the preceding games against Monaghan, Antrim and Down or the All-Ireland semi-final against Dublin which followed, either.

By the time the championship rolled around again a few months later, Cavan were drawn to play Tyrone in Omagh and, again, attendance was limited due to Covid restrictions. Only a small percentage of the ground’s capacity were allowed in. And maybe it was just as well as Tyrone again proved Cavan’s bogey team, winning well; the only consolation was they went on to win the Ulster and All-Ireland titles.

Fast forward another year and Cavan were in Belfast. This time, the crowd was limited to 3,000, which provoked uproar among many Cavan followers and seemed to confirm again that Cavan supporters who wanted to see their team play in the championship would be denied the opportunity for the third season and seventh match in succession.

When it came down to it, however, many Cavan fans chose not to make the journey. There were lots of free seats in the compact stand at Corrigan Park. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that throw-in was fixed for the ridiculous time of 2pm on a Saturday.

The game was not particularly well-marketed by Ulster GAA, either – many thought they had little chance of getting tickets and thus, when it became clear in the days before the match that it was not going to sell out, had no plans made to give up an entire day in order to travel to Belfast.

There were other mitigating factors, too, notably the U20s having played in the Ulster final in Enniskillen the evening before and the minors being out at 6pm that evening in Omagh. We all know that inflation is through the roof as well, with fuel prices particularly high.

Someone pointed out to me recently that Gaelic games were once the great pastime of the ordinary Irishman, who would bring his family on a Sunday. Those days aren’t gone yet but the cost of getting there and getting in is prohibitive to some.

Colm O’Rourke, commentating on the ‘Corrigan Park or Nowhere’ a few weeks back, even joked that the “Cavan farmers wouldn’t pay for the diesel” to travel to Belfast. It was meant in good spirits and taken as such (nobody enjoys the stingy Cavanman stereotype as much as Cavan people, in my experience).

At the time, O’Rourke suggested that this match could attract a crowd of 15,000, which was always very wide of the mark.

The former Meath star – a pundit who, in fairness, generally talks a lot of sense – was also one of those who was way off in how they saw the match going. On Morning Ireland, he tipped Antrim to win the game; Peter Canavan and Oisin McConville did likewise pre-match on the BBC.

It was head-scratching stuff. Antrim had lost the first round in Ulster 35 teams in 40 years leading into this game; Cavan had won more Ulster Championship matches in 2019 and 2020 than the Saffrons had in total from 1983 to the present day.

By any measure, then, this would have had to be a vintage Antrim team to win this match – either that or this would have had to be a very weak Cavan outfit. It was obvious that neither was the case; Antrim won three matches in Division 3 this year while Cavan were Ulster champions just 18 months ago and in the final the year before that.

It all pointed to one conclusion: this Cavan team are not respected outside of the county. The pundits are clearly reading a lot into league status. But it’s worth remembering that, had Cavan not carelessly lost by two points at home to Clare in March 2020, they would very likely have finished that year as Ulster champions and back in Division 1.

Covid intervened and two narrow losses against Kildare and Roscommon saw Cavan become just the third team since the four-tier, linear league was introduced in 2008, to be relegated on six points.

The 2021 league saw Cavan unthinkably slip to Division 4 but that was a shortened, four-game affair. It was bad, inexcusable, but being relegated after just four games was an unprecedented situation and, as such, it was folly to read too much into it.

And here we are. The Cavan players and management have been stung by the coverage of the Corrigan Park affair and general analysis of the team (“Our appetite was questioned during the league,” Graham railed) and are exhibiting a spiky attitude on and off the field, like a group who are angry and feel they have a point to prove.

That is a good mindset for any sportsperson or team to be in, particularly underdogs. As Seal, not an Ulster football authority to the best of our knowledge, put it, you’re never gonna survive unless you get a little crazy.

Cavan were on a hiding to nothing throughout the National League; only convincing wins every time they went out would have sated the supporters (and aforementioned pundits) and that wasn’t realistic. But they won it and have now put Antrim to the sword; expectations have been heightened in recent years, a compliment to Cavan, and thus far, they have done what a team of this experience and quality should be doing.

But the season starts now. Like it or not, there is a school of thought out there – and it is unfair and inaccurate – that Cavan fluked an Ulster title in freak circumstances in the winter of 2020. A win over Donegal this Sunday puts all of that talk to bed.

This time, there are no external factors which will affect attendance. The weather forecast looks good and the blue crowd will travel in maximum numbers for the first time since before there was such a thing as COVID-19.

To paraphrase the man from the Irish Times, on Sunday, the Cavan fans will bring the noise. The feeling is that their team are primed and playing with a chip on their shoulder but Donegal will not lack motivation either, for obvious reasons.

A defining match is in store, one way or the other.

And the heading from two years ago is pertinent again: Cavan have a huge chance.