Fitzpatrick: A west Cavan regional side is a decade overdue

Few individuals born outside the county are as familiar with west Cavan as Peter Quinn.

In his 2014 memoir, the former GAA President noted that when his parents married, the border wasn’t in place and people from Teemore – his home turf – naturally looked to Ballyconnell as the place to buy groceries, buy and sell livestock and “where pints and half-ones were consumed and men got drunk”.

In fact, the Quinn home was part of the old Ballyconnell and Tomregan parish right up until the 1860s.

I’m not sure how long Quinn spent writing that book but, around the same time, he was also working on a commission to look into ways to improve football in Cavan; he chaired an 11-strong committee whose exhaustively-researched report was published in December 2012.

Parochial

Much of the thrust of that report was about structures, coaching and standards but there was a wider message running through it, too: Cavan football could not afford to become parochial to the point where every club looked after its own patch and nothing else. That point was made repeatedly.

“We do accept that Cavan would probably be better off with a smaller number of much stronger clubs,” the report stated.

However, it recognised the importance of club identity and its value in community terms and stopped short of recommending a reduction in the number of clubs. Instead, the committee advocated group or regional teams in the Senior Championship as a means of raising standards, which Quinn called “a sort of half-way house”.

Fourteen years on, it is worth revisiting because some of the challenges the report identified have become more pronounced, particularly in west Cavan.

Because of the county’s unusual shape, there is a tendency to regard the entire panhandle as ‘west Cavan’ but that can’t really be right. ‘West of the Erne’ may be a more accurate definition, although admittedly that brings in areas which traditionally have not regarded themselves as belonging to the region.

However we draw the boundary, the footballing picture is clear enough. There was no west Cavan team in the Senior Championship this year and there hasn’t been since Belturbet were relegated in 2013. (That is if you count Belturbet as west Cavan, of course.)

The only side from the region in intermediate was Drumlane and they failed to advance from the group stage. The rest are operating in the third tier and, as the Junior Championship reaches its decisive stages, just one remains standing: Templeport St Aidan’s.

While the GAA in Co Cavan was born in the west, the region was never the engine room of the county team in the 20th century. Of the 1947 All-Ireland-winning panel, for example, TP O’Reilly, Eunan Tiernan and Owen Roe McGovern were the only west Cavan men.

There have, however, been periods when football in the region was remarkably vibrant. One era coincided with the heyday of the Quinn business empire (Sean, for those who don’t know, is Peter’s brother).

Back then, almost every club within 20 miles of its base in Teemore and Ballyconnell enjoyed success. Some, such as Belturbet and Redhills, travelled from junior to senior. Corlough played in Division 1 of the All-County League. Drumlane finally won a Junior Championship after decades of trying. Templeport went senior in 1995. There were similar examples across the border in Leitrim and Fermanagh. The exception was Ballyconnell, where the club – Kildallan – have a large pick and have been mired in junior for too long.

Emigration has always stalked the region. Swathes of the area are mountainous or boggy, leaving conditions difficult for agriculture. In more recent times, rural depopulation has become a serious concern and the GAA itself has undertaken a huge body of work on the issue.

Quinn’s committee could see the problem coming and may have been the first to recognise that, statistically, Cavan has too many clubs.

“We were struck by the fact that only two counties in Ireland have smaller populations per affiliated club than Cavan – Leitrim and Laois,” the report noted.

It calculated that if Cavan had the same population per club as the average among its peers, it would have just 34 or 35 football clubs and not the current 40.

That was not an argument to start shutting units down. Quinn recognised that rural clubs in particular serve a purpose greater than just fielding teams and competing on the pitch.

However, club amalgamations – mergers more than takeovers - are already happening around the country and inevitably will become more common. Sometimes it’s successful; often, it’s not.

There is one recent example in Cavan. Corlough, traditionally working from the smallest pick in the county, threw their lot in with Templeport a couple of years ago and reports indicate it has worked very well. That is not always guaranteed; a previous short-lived Corlough dalliance with Swanlinbar was not a good fit.

The hope, obviously, is that the remaining clubs can continue to stand on their own but preserving individual clubs and providing their best players with a higher level of football are not mutually exclusive, which is why the regional-team idea floated by Quinn’s committee deserves another look.

Quinn knew that club identity must be preserved where possible but that it was also imperative to offer a higher level of football to the best players from the smaller clubs.

For the county board, the argument should be particularly compelling now. In the hunt for footballers capable of lining out at senior inter-county level – a search which took Cavan as far as Galway last year - every avenue should be exhausted.

Marooned

Are players being missed at present? Absolutely – if they are late bloomers or don’t make a county minor or U20 team, players with potential could find themselves marooned in junior ranks, off Broadway, restricted to a lower level of training and matches.

There would be difficulties - there always are. The Junior Championship – and the Intermediate if that was included, which it should be – would have to be finished before the Senior started, which would be a logistical pain but not insurmountable if the will is there.

Quinn’s report contained another line which has aged particularly well.

“However uncertain the future may be, we must, within the limits of our capacity, try to ensure that it is designed to be what we want it to be; we cannot afford to walk into the future totally unprepared.”

The outliers are Templeport, who are on the verge of an exciting period if they can keep their squad together. The Bawnboy men aside, west Cavan, at present, feels like something of an untapped resource for the county. Some of our greatest players of the modern era – Anthony Forde, Gearoid McKiernan and Jason McLoughlin spring to mind– have come from the area, which proves that junior clubs can produce elite footballers.

The challenge now for Cavan football is to give the new generation a stage on which to shine. Quinn, ever the visionary, saw the need 14 years ago; the demographics have only strengthened his argument since.