Pride is on the line for this Cavan group

Opinion

In the Sunday Times on the morning his team upset Mayo in Castlebar, Roscommon manager Davy Burke made a point we’ve never heard an inter-county manager express before.

“You think at inter-county level it’s all so tactical,” he stated.

“You see The Sunday Game analysing everything. Every team I’m looking at, we’re all playing the same way, give or take.”

Burke wasn’t afraid to show how the sausage is made.

“Too many of these county teams, this big secrecy around inter-county training – you’d swear we were doing magic there. A lot of it is very basic,” he said.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Football teams are prepared to the nth degree and much thought goes into managing ‘the load’ on players. Some set-ups have footballers filling in questionnaires before training, rating their previous night’s sleep out of 10 and all that jazz.

That sort of thing feels cutting edge and has its place but the effect on actual results is surely miniscule. That’s because preparing teams is an art, not a science, and one of the biggest factors in performance remains emotion.

That is why the old-fashioned siege mentality remains so popular in Gaelic games - it works. A perceived or even invented slight focuses minds, draws the group closer, increases motivation.

And it’s also why the team whose need is greater has an advantage. So, Cavan and Armagh – which is it?

The Orchard have now gone 15 years without winning the Anglo-Celt Cup; the last time they endured a famine this long was between 1982 and 1999 and once they ended that, they went on to win it seven times in a glorious decade.

Under Kieran McGeeney, their provincial record has been terribly disappointing for their vast support base. The All-Ireland-winning captain took charge for the 2015 season and since then, they have played 13 matches in the Ulster Championship, winning four; the only counties not to beat them in Ulster in that time are Antrim, whom they’ve beaten twice, and Tyrone, whom they haven’t actually played.

Given his status as an iconic former player and the mystique around him, there is often inordinate interest in McGeeney’s sides and thus far, they have delivered only in patches, with last year’s run to the All-Ireland quarter-final, where they lost on penalties to Galway, the high point.

They picked up some notable scalps last season all told, seeing off Tyrone in league and championship and avenging a provincial loss to Donegal in the qualifiers as well as defeating Dublin in the league in Croke Park.

That sort of form was vastly superior to what Cavan showed in toiling through Division 4, losing an Ulster semi-final to Donegal and beating middling opposition en route to a loss against Westmeath in the inaugural Tailteann Cup final, which perhaps explains why the Blues are rated as 9/4 outsiders to win in Kingspan Breffni this Saturday.

Armagh supporters are longing for an Ulster title but selector Ciaran McKeever made it very clear that for the management, the Anglo-Celt Cup is not the goal.

“The way the whole season is crammed in now it looks like this is the beginning of the end of the Ulster championship the way it’s all going,” he said at the launch of the competition.

“We will be going out to try and compete to win every match but we are under no illusion – our main priority is the Super 16s. That’s when the real football starts.”

Those comments carry a health warning and should probably be disregarded but it did get us thinking about Armagh’s motivation. They have a safety net there in that they are guaranteed to compete in the Sam Maguire, regardless of results in Ulster. Cavan do not.

There is a real sense that Saturday evening is all or nothing for this Cavan team. It has been surprising how many Breffni supporters have made the comment in conversation, almost with a hint of surprise in their voice as if what they are saying is a bold call, that they fancy Cavan to beat Armagh.

For anyone following closely the journey this Cavan team has been on, it must be clear that they are very much in their prime now. Okay, Mickey Graham has quietly reconstructed the body over the last couple of seasons but the engine, more or less, remains intact.

Eight, give or take, of the 2020 Ulster final team will start on Saturday, with most of them above or closing in on the century of senior appearances. They are a well-conditioned, highly-seasoned and decorated group now; in fact, Cavan have not had this much cumulative experience and as many medals in the squad in over 50 years.

The draw Cavan have been handed was as good as they could have hoped for. Armagh at home followed by either a Down team clawing their way out of the abyss or a vulnerable-looking Donegal to make an Ulster final, with Derry, Tyrone and Monaghan on the other side.

The Cavan camp must be, and will be, looking on this as a massive opportunity. Careless relegations, albeit in freak circumstances on a couple of occasions, saw them denied the chance to test themselves since winning the 2020 Ulster Championship.

Cavan have not played a qualifier game since 2019 – and it could even be argued they were on a hiding to nothing that day, coming off losing a first Ulster final in 19 years and facing their ultimate bogey team, back door specialists Tyrone.

The Tailteann Cup did them no favours. From the outset, they were installed as hot favourites to win it; had they done so, what validation would it really have provided? And that they didn’t was nigh on disastrous, too.

Last year, they slaughtered Antrim but possibly gave Donegal too much respect and were undone by a couple of sloppy mistakes and a helping of bad luck.

The sense is that this is the chance they have been waiting for, to make a statement, take down a team that has been hyped up and propel themselves to within one win of securing a place in the Sam Maguire.

As always, convincing arguments can be made as to why Cavan won’t come out on top – scoring goals is one area where they have struggled – but there comes a time in the development of a team when they just have to win, when losing is no longer an option.

We are drawn back to Killian Brady’s reflection on the 2020 Ulster final in an interview with this newspaper a few months afterwards.

“There was a core group of us there, maybe eight or ten, since 2013, but there was player-turnover over the years. But looking back now, you might think: ‘We've another opportunity next year and we'll start again’. I think that perception changed because a lot of us have played more than we have to play now, so you had to reach a point where you say to yourself: ‘There can be no next year’.

“I don't know if we got massive confidence out of the way we were playing (in 2020) because we were so far behind in a lot of the games but the confidence probably came from the decision that enough was enough and we were going to get over the line.”

That has to be Cavan’s mindset again this Saturday. Defeat, at home, would be a sickening blow at this stage in the development of the team. It feels like a defining game, post-2020, for the group.

Pride is on the line and, while it can’t be measured scientifically, that is one of the most powerful forces of all in sport. Lose this and it's off to the Tailteann again with more questions around the team; win and there are answers, they gain respect and the summer opens up before them.

Cavan, then, to get the job done.