Fall of an empire spawned a self-fulfilling GAA prophecy

Cavanman's Diary

Cast your mind back, if you will, to December of 2020. Cavan have just won the Ulster Championship and are set to face Dublin in the All-Ireland semi-final.

The county has gone football doolally, as sometimes happens, but there is a sadness there too as, due to lockdown restrictions, supporters haven’t been able to attend the games.

Some, myself included, would argue that the latter fact actually helped Cavan’s chances at the time – but we will get to that later.

On RTE television, the pundits are previewing the game. Colm O’Rourke, after some light-hearted gibes, concludes his analysis with a compliment.

“Cavan are the most wonderful, passionate GAA people that you could ever meet. I would say the best (supporters) in the country.”

O’Rourke, born in Leitrim, reared in Meath and intimately familiar with Cavan, was repeating something that has often been said, particularly in the bygone, knock-out era when Cavan had the ability to rise their game on a given day and take out almost anyone - and took great pride in that.

In 1968, TP O’Reilly, two-time All-Ireland winner and later famously passionate county board chairman, told the Gaelic Weekly magazine that Cavan would fancy themselves to beat Down or Donegal any time they faced them in an Ulster final. It wasn’t said for show; it came from the heart.

There was always that sense that an army of Cavan supporters could be raised in an instant, the inherent sense that form was merely illusory and that Cavan would not take a step back against anyone.

“We had huge respect for that Cavan team,” Down legend Colm McAlarney told me some years ago, referring to the Cavan side who dethroned Down in four Ulster finals in the 1960s.

“In those days, Cavan were coming, breathing fire, and unless you were ready to run through brick walls, you were going to be on the receiving end.”

Where did that come from? Expectation maybe – and, that, in turn, came from what was a recent history of success at the time.

A few years back, Donegal All-Ireland winner Joyce McMullin was interviewed in the local press ahead of a game against Cavan.

He was asked to recount some memories of his time playing against Cavan. In his era, Donegal were one of the top sides in the country; Cavan had a good team but at a time when the standard in Ulster football was at an all-time high, the breakthrough was slow to arrive.

Yet Donegal generally found things difficult against Cavan, McMullin said.

“It was very evident with them that they were a really proud football county. The tradition stood to them and they believed. They had the chests out. They were strange enough characters. Some of them mightn’t have been very good players, but they made themselves look big and they behaved as if they were great players.

“That was what they had; tradition. It was like: ‘We have the blue jersey on and we’ll be hard to beat.’”

The line about “strange characters” aside (to give McMullin the benefit of the doubt, it probably reads differently in print than was intended), “that” was still there in McMullin’s era, the 1980s and early 1990s.

By 1997, McMullin had retired, although current manager Jim McGuinness was playing, when Cavan blitzed Donegal in the Ulster semi-final and then won the final. At a time when the population of the county was around 55,000, an estimated 20,000 showed up for the homecoming. There were many among the crowd who vividly recalled the All-Ireland wins; there were plenty who even played in them.

The tradition was alive and had never been as well. On that same afternoon, O’Rourke’s Meath drew with Kildare in a Leinster classic at Croke Park but Cavan were the talk of the nation. On the rock-hard Clones turf, O’Rourke’s words were made flesh as the best supporters in the country partied like it was 1949.

Fast forward 27 years. Cavan are playing Donegal in the league. New manager, a great away result a week earlier. A buzz in Breffni?

Veteran reporter Peter Campbell of the Donegal Democrat can take it from here.

“Please show your appreciation for the Cavan team,” Peter’s colour piece last week began.

“It was the PA announcer in Kingspan Breffni Park as he welcomed the home team on to the pitch. There was a gentle ripple of applause.

“Seconds later the announcer, ‘please show your appreciation for the Donegal team’ to a thunderous response for those Donegal supporters who made the trip. The difference between the two receptions was palpable.

“It must have felt good to be running out on the pitch and getting such a warm welcome away from home. Cavan had won their opening game away from home against Kildare and they are normally fairly good supporters, especially when they are going well.”

There is a lot to unpack in Peter’s last line there; it says so much. Cavan can no longer boast of having the best supporters in the land, as the almost apologetic cheers which greeted the team on to the pitch last Sunday week made clear.

There was a time when, it seemed, nobody would miss a big match. Now, Cavan’s travelling support is nothing out of the ordinary and, at times, they are out-numbered even at home.

How has it come to this? Here is a team and manager putting their best foot forward, a group of lads who have given the supporters some great days, and while, yes, the fans got into it in the closing stages, the general lack of a buzz among the home followers must have been faintly embarrassing for the squad and mentors and certainly dispiriting, as Campbell insinuated.

Where has it come from? An argument can be made that the county has changed, not beyond recognition but drastically enough to perhaps sever a cord with a century-old tradition.

Personally, I think repeated and sustained disappointments have gotten people down. There is a sub-conscious fear of getting too carried away, of it happening again. We privately hope for the best but publicly expect the worst – and it’s the hope, they say, that kills you.

Football is not just a pastime in Cavan, it is the main cultural and sporting pursuit. But our empire fell and as those who lived through the glory days dwindled in number, the tribe’s self-perception changed. As football followers, Cavan now suffer from a chronic lack of confidence which probably feeds into the team itself and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

At the risk of getting too high falutin’ about it all, I would argue Cavan supporters actually bear the characteristics of an oppressed people. One academic study lists those as follows: Damaged self-respect, negative attacks on leaders, divisive behaviour, fault-finding manner, complaining, backbiting, fierce criticism, expecting win/lose situations, and pessimism.

Be honest – think of conversations you’ve had with fellow fans (maybe in a survivors’ group of some kind – actually, I’m doing it myself. Maybe gallows humour should be added to the list). Those traits could have been penned with us specifically in mind.

The good news is that things can change. Others have done it. While we’re on the subject of Donegal, for example, it’s worth noting that their entire history of success is a modern one. The county didn’t even play Division 1 football until 1988.

Ray Galligan is aware of the latent force that’s there, of how the team needs the supporters to build momentum, to spur them on, to provide mood music that is conducive to success. In his first interview as manager with this newspaper last September, he referenced it.

“I always had quite a good relationship with supporters. The main stakeholders in all this are the players but at the same time we have to be very transparent with our supporters,” he said.

“I want Cavan with blue and white flags on every pole during the summer, I want Breffni jammed for the first few rounds of the league. As the saying goes, it’s the 16th man and there is no better feeling than having that support cheering you on. It raises the hair on the back of your neck.”

It's sad that even the media from another county are now commenting on the muted welcome the Cavan team receive in a home game, how Cavan are “normally fairly good supporters, especially when they are going well”.

For decades, it has felt like Cavan had to overcome both the opposition and their own supporters at times, with 2020 – when the fans were housebound and their own doubts and jitters could not be transmitted to the pitch – a notable exception.

It's not easy to win inter-county matches but it’s clear to see the Cavan team are holding up their end of the bargain in terms of effort. If the general tone of the discourse changed, if the backing was truly there, who knows where it would take them.

Emancipation is always possible but defiance requires faith and that has been in short supply for too long now.