'How many selectors are there? About 10,000 for a big game'

Cavanman's Diary

If there’s one thing we, as Cavan people, like hearing, it is that we love our football. When a prominent football personality - on the Sunday Game, say, or in a newspaper, back when people read those - comes out with a statement like that, it has the same effect as handing a comfort blanket to a cranky toddler.

Our temper is soothed, any apprehensions we have just dissipate; our crying is replaced by gurgling and smiling. We’re happy in our nappy – clap your hands!

Of course, it’s not exactly true. A stranger could drive through the county and never know we won a thing, for example. No, what we really love, I believe, is being told we love our football. Because if we did truly love it, why do we tend, not always now but quite often over the years, to treat it so poorly? Then again, Freud – not a Gaelic football fan, to the best of our knowledge – wrote about love and hate being intrinsically linked. Maybe he was on to something.

Cavan is synonymous with football alright but the old chestnut about football being a religion in these parts is wishful thinking, I reckon. It’s something we like to believe but, if it is a religion, it’s one a lot of Cavan folk adhere to on an ‘a la carte’ basis, along the lines of what someone recently brilliantly described as “bouncy castle Catholics”.

That’s not to say that we don’t like talking about it, you understand. Football is, in my experience, the number one topic of conversation in the county, particularly when the county team is going well. And our fluctuating football fortunes only add to this chatter.

Cavan are unique in football in that we went from landed gentry to penniless paupers, staring jealously at the nouveau riche, and while we have found ourselves flush every now and then, we are generally fairly strapped. Nathaniel Hawthorne said that families are always rising and falling in America; the same goes for football, in Ireland, and the fatalism it has engendered in Cavan fans makes for a deliciously droll outlook.

A good few years ago, when Terry Hyland was a selector with Cavan, I introduced him to a colleague from outside the county. “Terry is a selector with the Cavan team,” I explained.

“Oh, that’s great,” said my colleague. “Pleased to meet you. How many selectors are there?”

“About 10,000 for a championship game,” Terry said, without missing a beat.

Later, when Terry became the Cavan manager, I spoke to him about football on a weekly basis.

We were like an old married couple in ways (Freud might have had something to say about that). I'd call him, routinely, on a Tuesday morning at his store and, just as routinely, he'd answer warmly and then break off to deal with a customer. I think he was doing it to wind me up half the time.

“Moe.”

“Well Terry. How's the -”

“Hold on a minute. [muffled] How many sheets are you looking for? It'll be after dinner now till we get it over to ya...”

Terry didn't just hand out the info I needed as soon as I fluttered my eyelids. He wasn't that kinda guy; he was coy, made me work for it. I'd ask him how things were shaping up for the weekend and he'd tell me he was thinking of picking 15 players. I'd enquire had he any injury concerns and he'd tell me his back was “at him”. You get the idea.

Up against deadline, I'd curse him under my breath! We'd eventually get round to what I wanted, a few nanny goats (that's rhyming slang for quotes, although Hyland Hardware could probably source the four-legged variety at fairly short notice) and Terry would deliver.

Anyway, I remembered that line a few years ago when the mother of a Cavan footballer rang me at work. When I said that Cavan people love to talk football, I should have clarified that a majority of the chatter tends to be negative. We have never seen a match or a player about which we could not conjure up some kind of complaint. We are genuinely enthusiastic football moaners.

I know this for sure because I get a lot of phone calls from supporters. Some just want to talk football, which suits me fine; others want to get the inside line on something (and for some reason think that I might have it) or wish to correct something erroneous that has appeared in the sports section.

The best ones, though, are the cranky callers, the football followers who are mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Sometimes it’s parents. A common opening gambit goes along the lines of, “you said Player A played well in that Division 6 Cumann na mBunscol final, what have you got against Player B?”, to which I always feel like replying “I can’t stand the sight of him”.

Once, after Cavan won The Anglo-Celt Cup in the winter of 2020, I got a call from a person related to a member of a successful Cavan team of the 1930s, raging – I kid you not – that the focus of the coverage had shifted to the current team and we were ignoring the great men of 90 years ago. The caller was raging over this.

I once had a manager call with a bone to pick. “You stated our tactics were wrong,” he began, accusingly. I agreed that I had.

“Well,” he said, almost purring with contentment that I had walked into his trap. “That’s where you’re wrong. Because we didn’t have tactics.”

I said sorry for suggesting that he, as a team manager in a championship match, would have had some sort of strategy in place and, missing the heavy sarcasm, he graciously accepted my apology and went on his way.

But back to the angry matriarch. This was a few years ago and she wasn't happy with something I had written, it quickly transpired. In fact, she felt I was unfair on her little boy (I won't give away his identity but he ain't that little and would, for sure, be mortified if he knew Mammy was making this call).

Normally, I'd try to flat-bat this sort of thing but this time, I decided to engage in conversation.

“But sure he didn't have a good year last year, it wasn't his fault but you can't deny it,” I reasoned, poking the bear.

“Well, Terry Hyland wouldn't pass the ball to him!” she said, clearly so caught up in blaming the manager that she used his name to refer to the entire team.

“Listen, Terry Hyland is 56 and the back is at him,” I replied matter-of-factly. She didn't get the joke but I did...

You'd have to wonder. Then again, maybe we in the newspaper business should be glad of the attention. As that man Freud said (maybe), be careful what you wish for…