Inconvenient truths on the radio leave us squirming

Cavanman's Diary

Sometimes, it takes an outsider to see, or perhaps say, what you can’t yourself.

Sunday afternoon, Northern Sound radio, and presenter Dave Hooper, a Dubliner, has football correspondent Damien Donohoe – also a contributor to this newspaper – on the line.

Hooper introduces the segment, reeling off the scorelines from around the grounds first. Armagh, who we thought Cavan would beat a few weeks back, are drawing with heavyweights Galway; Westmeath, whom Cavan beat in the league this year, are really putting it up to Tyrone. Already, we are feeling wistful for what might have been.

I have abridged some of the conversation below but the general gist pertains.

“Yesterday, there was big disappointment for Cavan when they bowed out of the Tailteann Cup. The Tailteann Cup dream is over, the season is over, does this go down as a catastrophe?” Hooper begins, on the front foot.

Immediately, my ears prick up. I feel like a white settler in 1860s America, faintly detecting the distant rattle of hooves from a Commanche raiding party. This could get ugly…

If he’s taken aback, Donohoe doesn’t let on. He considers the question.

“A catastrophe…” he ponders, rolling the phrase around in his mouth.

“The words that are being constantly being bandied about in Cavan at the moment are ‘major disappointment’. The dividing line between a major disappointment and a catastrophe… I’d stay closer to major disappointment.

“It’s not a million miles off though… I spoke to you earlier on in the year and I was saying Cavan can compete with some of the best teams in the country. The reality is that the average performance from Cavan is below the (national) average. We don’t really have a place in Sam Maguire.

“And that’s probably the reality that’s come out from yesterday, we’re not good enough to win the Tailteann Cup at current performances and therefore we’ve got to re-evaluate and see exactly what can be done to change those fortunes. But ‘major disappointment’ I’ll take over catastrophe.”

The performances against Armagh and Down were “way off the mark”, Hooper rightly points out.

“The performance yesterday was what really shocked me, they never led in the game itself,” he says.

The presenter then produces an article from the Irish Examiner from last November penned by the brilliant Paul Rouse, headlined “Cavan’s struggle for relevance shows the GAA cannot be complacent”.

Rouse’s piece referenced a column written on this page which asked the following question: “Is Cavan still a football county?”

“That, I think, is very relevant because even though they’re the most successful Ulster team etc, they’re just not able to compete any more at the top table so there’s something very, very wrong in Cavan football,” says Dave.

Cut to Damien. A sharp intake of breath, and then he replies.

“Yeah... Yeah, there definitely is and I think even the attendances at games are starting to show that. The debate is, is it that the Cavan support aren’t there or is that the Cavan supporters haven’t got something to come out and support?

“There have been failings on a lot of what has been done in Cavan over the last decade. We won four Ulster U21 titles in a row and a minor title in the early part of the last decade but for some reason we changed what we were doing in development squads, we were the talk of the province in Ulster about how we were producing these underage players coming through that were of a very high calibre and that conveyor belt stopped and there has been very, very little to cheer about over the ensuing decade at underage... It’s just not good enough unfortunately.”

In the car, I grimace. I pull in because it’s not safe to drive while wincing that hard. Dave is throwing everything he has at this. We are being forced to consider some mortifying, unassailable truths.

He brings up our massive surge in population, which took away our favourite old excuse. Oh Jesus. The compound has been breached. Code red! Code red!

“And why is this occurring? Rouse made the point in his column that in 1966, 54,000 people lived in Cavan. From 1970 to 1996 Cavan did not win a single Ulster title. Now, the population has increased by 60 per cent from its lowest point in 1966 (yet) the footballers have stayed stagnant.

“You see the clubs going into the Ulster Club Championship and they’re making zero impact, they’ve never really progressed at all, and the (county) footballers themselves, albeit the 2020 Ulster Championship… they’re not even able to compete at Tailteann Cup level now.”

Damien makes the salient point that Cavan are lagging behind at underage level.

“I think there are moves in the right direction in that but I still don’t think we’re where we need to be. If you look at our schools record, it’s another abysmal record if you compare it to Monaghan, a county of similar population. They’ve had three teams compete at MacRory Cup level over the last five or six years, Cavan have had one and have won one MacRory Cup title in 50 years. We’re just not doing enough unfortunately and the standards have to be improved.

“Underage success is where Cavan need to be looking at this point… Senior success rarely happens without underage success… As a county board, there is a lot of good work being done in Cavan but we need to double down on the efforts.”

Hooper interjects. By now, I’m lying in the back seat, in the foetal position, rocking back and forth, wishing I’d asked Niall Brady to install a panic button when buying this car.

“I know what you’re saying Damien, I hear that Damien, I hear it a lot but I’ll make the point again. The expectation is that Cavan are going to be at the top table, they’re going to be mixing it in the All-Ireland Championship, they’re going to win the Tailteann Cup as we heard this year.

“But the reality of that is very different. I think it was 2019 the last time they even played Division 2 football… The expectation is phenomenal (compared) to what’s actually coming out on the pitch.”

Donohoe: “The weight of expectation comes with the history, unfortunately.”

Hooper: “Yeah, it comes with the history, Damien, but is the history relevant? ’97 and 2020 are the two Ulster Championship wins. You’re going back a couple of decades before that.

“I hate to question the John Joe O’Reilly statue, he was a legend in GAA circles but how many people have actually had first-hand experience of who John Joe O’Reilly was.”

I sit upright. Hold on a second now, I think. Just wait a second... Don’t let him away with this, Damo, I silently beg.

Donohoe: “Well, to me, the John Joe O’Reilly statue is a very important thing and it’s a great addition because you go down to Kerry and you see greats of that era in statues.”

Hooper: “But the difference is Kerry are still winning All-Ireland championships whereas Cavan haven’t –“

Donohoe: “But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the All-Ireland championships that we won.”

Thattaboy Donohoe! But Hooper, like any good journalist, is unrelenting.

“No, you shouldn’t ignore it but it seems to hang over, it’s worse than the England soccer team who last won a World Cup in ’66. You’re going even further back and putting this expectation and weight from those players on to the (current) Cavan players.”

Donohoe: “Well, I disagree. I think Cavan’s biggest issue at this moment in time is belief. Do we really believe that we’re going to compete for Sam Maguire? I don’t think that there’s anybody in the county at this moment in time that thinks that Cavan could win Sam Maguire or were in a position to win Sam Maguire since 2020 – and I’d be fairly confident in that.

“I don’t think the statue is any harm because I do believe it’s important to see that this has been done in the past.

Hooper: “Yeah I take that point but…”

Donohoe (feathers ruffled): “That’s all irrelevant, I think that’s a sideshow, Dave, I don’t think that’s relevant to where Cavan are now. Where Cavan are now is not a result of putting up a statue or our history, Cavan are in the position we are in now because of what we’ve done in the last 10, 15 years. That’s the position we’re currently in.

“If Cavan hadn’t won those U21 titles back at the start of the last decade, God knows where we’d be… It’s less to do with statues and our history than it is to do with how we’ve tried to prepare our underage teams.

Hooper: “Okay, very good point there. How has that gone so wrong then that the underage… You watch other sports, Ireland were very strong in international marathon running and then from 1990 to 2008, they couldn’t get a qualifier for the Olympics, how did it collapse in Cavan GAA that this loss of leadership occurred?”

Damien pauses, picks his words carefully before stating that “we just stopped doing the level of work that we were doing with development squads”.

A terrific over-and-back fizzles out. I clamber back into driver’s seat, rattled. At least the unpleasantness is over, though, and the bad man has stopped asking his questions.

I dial up the commentary of the 1997 Ulster final on my phone, the soothing sounds of Adrian Logan, draw my breath and turn the car for home again.

Inconvenient truths will keep for another day.