Future looks bleak after another Ulster collapse

Opinion

First things first: This wasn’t The Worst Ever. There have been just too many appalling displays over the years to attach that tag to this latest collapse. But it certainly felt like the most disappointing performance ever.

The last decade has been a journey for Cavan supporters, full of twists and turns, but conversations in the days since Saturday have had an air of finality about them.

Last week, the sun shone and anything was possible. As we write, it’s minus two degrees. A chill is in and Cavan are out.

It was clear coming into this match that it was a defining game for the group, post 2020. What made it especially significant was that, for the last couple of years, it has been impossible to make a fair, definitive judgement about this Cavan team.

The 2020 and 2021 National Leagues were two of the most disrupted and shortened and Cavan were perceived in some quarters as the fall guys, slipping through the relegation trapdoor on both occasions.

Marooned in the lower divisions, the argument went, they were being judged on one outing in Ulster, didn’t get a crack at the All-Ireland qualifiers, missed out on the opportunity to take a scalp. In 2021, they went to Omagh missing half a team and lost to the All-Ireland champions in waiting, a side Cavan haven’t beaten since before any of the current panel were born.

Last year, they impressed against Donegal and were undone by bad luck. The excuses were there, plentiful and hanging low, if you wanted to harvest them.

The sense around the Armagh game, though, was that it would settle the argument. There sometimes comes a moment in the lifespan of a team where they simply have to win and this was simply it for Cavan.

It’s important to note that this is the most experienced and decorated panel Cavan has assembled in over 50 years. It is also the best-resourced panel the county has sent out in terms of funding, in terms of back-room expertise. And the championship draw was sweet – a home game against a side with whom there is no mental baggage, with arguably the three best teams in the province on the other side and, waiting in the semi-final, a Donegal on their knees and a Down outfit Cavan beat by 10 a few weeks back.

And despite the bookmakers installing Armagh as favourites, there was a great deal of confidence behind Cavan, too. Most journos on the GAA beat whom we spoke to – from all over - fancied them to win.

Given those factors, it was realistic for supporters to expect the team to win this game and go on to an Ulster final. If not now, then when could they expect it?

The great hope was that Cavan would rise to the challenge, be bold in their play, have that bit of controlled spite about them. That they would silence the critics who saw them as talented but flaky, who wrote off the 2020 Ulster win as a freak ‘Covid Cup’.

And then the ball was thrown in and from very early on, it was clear that none these things would happen. As the rain teemed down, the supporters fell silent as a sense of Déjà vu abounded.

Cavan were passive and cautious to the point of fear in the first half an hour. They looked devoid of any idea how to break down the Armagh defence and relied on pot shots to try to close the gap.

It was the same old story, a pattern that has repeated itself several times: Cavan play meekly, lack conviction, wait for things to happen, and fall seven points or more down by the midway point before, with all seemingly lost, having a proper crack at it in the second half.

It’s shocking to think that in the last five years alone, it occurred against Monaghan and Down in the 2020 Ulster Championship when they trailed by seven and 10 in the first half yet managed miraculous comebacks. It happened against Donegal in the 2019 Ulster final, against Tyrone in the subsequent qualifier, against Tyrone again in the 2021 Ulster Championship.

It also happened as far back as 2018 against Donegal in Ballybofey in the Ulster quarter-final. When Mickey Graham took over, he referenced that match. He had watched it from the terraces and was disgusted by the timidity of Cavan’s challenge.

“It was like a challenge match,” he would remark in an interview the following year. “I just said to myself, Cavan are better than that.”

Five years on and would anyone now agree with his last point?

The grimmest part is that given the age profile and the mileage accrued, there will surely be an exodus over the next couple of seasons. By 2025, there is likely to be only a handful of Saturday’s team still starting.

Who will replace them? Cavan’s underage structures are not producing success. The U20s made an Ulster final last year but other than that, we have to go back to 2017 to find the last Ulster final appearance, let alone win.

The talent cannot be magicked out of thin air so it seems Cavan will slip back now, bit by bit. In a few years, supporters will probably be pining for this era.

The current group have mostly stuck at it, returned to the slog year-on-year, when, in the past, Cavan players lacked that resilience. That’s to their great credit. They are an exceptionally fine bunch of men - but we would be insulting them were we not to hold them to a high standard in terms of their performances and results.

The reality is that Mickey Graham inherited a Division 1 team at the end of the 2018 season which was crammed with successful U21 players aged 24 to 28. Inter-county teams are ultimately judged on championship and Graham brought about great improvement in championship football in the two years that followed his appointment - but 2021 was poor, 2022 resulted in a six-point loss to Donegal and a dreadful Tailteann final performance and last Saturday was just awful.

It’s hard to know where Cavan go from here. Nine of those who played in the last match before Graham took over as manager, that 2018 “challenge game” in McCumhaill Park, also played against Armagh on Saturday. They are now five years older, have exited Ulster with a limp performance again and are a division lower in the league. How can we honestly argue that this represents progress?

Like the old joke about the best thing in a particular town being the road out of it, the Tailteann Cup’s main selling point is that if you win it, you won’t have to play it the following year. Cavan have to go and do that now to secure top tier football for next year. And bleak as it sounds to spend another summer vying to be crowned 17th best in Ireland, Cavan may as well put their best foot forward because it seems probable that Sam Maguire football will be a rare treat over the coming years.

This experienced group of Cavan players have given it their all. They emerged at a very low point and afforded supporters truly great days as U21s and minors and as seniors, too, culminating in that Ulster title in 2020.

The fans should be grateful for their efforts. The hope was that more could follow – another Ulster, maybe, or an extended run deep in the Sam Maguire. That has been exposed now as merely a fantasy; the dream is probably dead.

The most sickening part about its passing? They say you should never die wondering. Cavan did, too many times over the years and last Saturday, again. And given the experience and quality, on the pitch and on the line, that is the most damning thing that can be said as another year gets away.