Flynn works the oracle again
Ladies football
Winning an All-Ireland is a great achievement but to have been a manager over eight All-Ireland winning teams, well that is a record that stands Mick Flynn head and shoulders above most others. On Friday evening last in the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick, Mick lead the Cavan U16 girls to their first All-Ireland A success since 1977.
The ladies beat Cork after a replay with two points in the dying minutes of the games is a testament to the group and all work they’ve put into this success, he said.
“Without a shadow of a doubt. It entails two groups, the girls themselves of course. Well, maybe it entails about seven or eight groups if you go far enough but it entails the girls themselves, it entails their families, their parents bringing them in and out and everything they have to go to. It entails most definitely the management group as well, who haven’t put a foot wrong and, yeah, it’s a very enjoyable time.”
With the sides level entering injury-time at the end of the replay there couldn’t have been much between the sides. We asked the Cavan Gaels man were Cavan the better team.
“Now, what exactly does that mean?” he replied, after a long pause.
“If the better team is the team that withstands the onslaught and then comes back in the last ten minutes of two hours or maybe two hours and twenty minutes and wins in injury time, well then the better team won. If the better team is the team that sticks at it longest and doesn’t drop.
“If the better team is the team the doesn’t think beyond the moment, if the better team is the team that puts pressure on the team that was doing all the running for a whole match. If the better team is the team that eventually comes through, stops the running and scores points in the last couple of minutes. Then without a shadow of a doubt, the better team won.”
Cavan got off to a flying start, leading by five points after 11 minutes but Cork then took control and held a four-point lead at half-time. The girls in blue didn’t let Cork get away from them in the middle of the game to set up a photo finish where they timed their final dash perfectly.
“It’s character. If you don’t have the character, well, then you’re going nowhere. You need the character and the willingness to just keep doing your best. Just keep giving your best, it’s not about winning, it’s about being the best that you can be, always. Then you can never beat yourself up, and nor can anyone else because you can say I did my best, I did my very best.
“I don’t know why everybody doesn’t do that but certainly our girls did and have done over the years. If you talk about the DNA of football in Cavan people, well it’s in the girls. I could run off names but I’m not going to because I don’t want to single out people, but you could run off name there with a deep history of success in football and inter-county football, I mean winning All-Irelands.
“There’s a connection with the Polo Grounds team, there’s a connection with the first teams that won in the ‘30s, there’s a connection with all of those teams when Cavan established a tradition, and that connection is still there.
“So why would we be surprised at success when it’s just in their nature? It’s in there and maybe when their backs were to the wall something comes from somewhere you don’t know. Maybe it sparks something in you and you say to yourself ‘no not this time, it’s not happening this time.’ And maybe that’s were they got that extra boost and Cork just couldn’t get out of their 21.”
Mick has down through the years managed to instill confidence in his teams to believe that they can beat the best and he has done this again with this group of champions.
“Everybody’s capable of doing it. My opinion is that you can get into the notion of ‘this is our level’. I don’t know how many teams there are in the Senior Championship this year but are there six or seven going into the championship saying ‘we’re not going to win this’? What are they basing it on?
“Are they discarding a possibility that this year everything might go right for us and everything might go wrong for them? Best case scenario, everything goes right for us and everything goes wrong for them, we’ll win the championship. Then you can start to water it down a little bit.
“It’s pointing out to people what’s in us. What we are capable of if we discard our fears, throw them away, forget about them and run towards it. Keep doing things the way you always did and you’ll get the same results. You just need to change the mindset like the story of the eagle who thought he was a chicken.”
Mick Flynn has pushed another group of young eagles off the top of the mountain and they have flown to All-Ireland success again.