Fitzpatrick: Excuses running out as Ulster Championship draw opens up

Paul Fitzpatrick

Some will use results in the Ulster Club SFC as a barometer of the standard of club football in a county but, to our mind, that isn’t necessarily fair. The records show that teams who do well in Ulster tend to boast some sort of dominance in their own county.

Witness last year’s Ulster final: Scotstown had just completed a three-in-a-row of Mick Duffy Cups while Kilcoo had won their seventh Down title in succession.

Errigal Ciaran bucked that trend the previous year and went all the way to the All-Ireland final but the Tyrone winners were actually the exception which proved the rule.

The Red Hands are the standard-bearers across virtually all grades of football in Ulster. They have won more All-Irelands across the board than any other county in the province this century and are top of the Ulster roll of honour at intermediate club level and joint-top in junior.

Surely it is an astonishing anomaly, then, that the Séamus McFerran Cup did not winter in the O’Neill County for 21 years from 2005. In fact, during that period, the Tyrone representatives contested the final just once, the same number of times as Cavan, and were twice eliminated by the Fermanagh champions.

That’s not to throw shade at the Erne county, by the way; rather, it points to the folly of using Ulster Club SFC results as a bellwether for the overall standard within a county. Nobody could seriously argue that Fermanagh club football is stronger than Tyrone’s.

Crucially, though, at the time, Derrygonnelly were in the middle of a period of sustained dominance whereas Tyrone crowned a different champion every year. Amazingly, Carrickmore, 21 years ago, remain the last club to retain the Tyrone championship.

There are obvious similarities with Cavan, where dominance by one senior club has also been rare; Castlerahan (2018-19) and Gowna (2022-23) are the only teams to put titles back to back in the last 16 renewals and five different clubs have won the title in the last seven years.

And there is another point which tends to get lost when Cavan’s provincial record is discussed. Historically, the county’s champions have often been much more competitive than the bald win-loss figures suggest.

There have certainly been some abject performances, particularly over the last 15 years, and those have helped create the impression that Cavan clubs simply cannot compete at this level. But over a longer period, the typical Cavan exit has been less dramatic: a narrow defeat, sometimes after extra time or a replay, often against high-quality opposition.

Kingscourt Stars made the Ulster final in 1987 so we’ll start there. Since then, there have been three other final appearances, six one-point losses, two extra-time exits, three replay defeats and another half-dozen one or two-point reversals.

Is that clutching at straws? Maybe. Ultimately, close defeats are still defeats but there is a sense that Cavan clubs are better than the bare statistics indicate.

The standard of opposition has to be factored in, too. On eight occasions in the last 40 years, Cavan’s senior champions have exited Ulster at the hands of a team who went on not just to win the province but to reach the All-Ireland final.

And, for the uninitiated, the last few years have been almost comical as Cavan champions have found ever-more fantastical ways to lose in the first round.

Kingscourt were a short price to defeat Erne Gaels at Kingspan Breffni last year, fell way behind in the first half and eventually lost in extra time against a side, with respect, a team of their standing and experience really should have been beating at home, as the bookies’ odds indicated.

The year before, Crosserlough went into the lion’s den in Newry to face Kilcoo – the 2022 All-Ireland champions – and had three players black-carded. Another, county star James Smith, was shown a second yellow card having not received a first one, later acknowledged in writing by the Ulster Council. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.

In 2023, Gowna had Naomh Conaill beaten after a tremendous second-half performance only to concede a slapstick goal in the 64th minute. The previous year, they led Enniskillen Gaels by three points in injury time and somehow ended up losing a penalty shoot-out. You get the idea…

The good news now is two-fold. Firstly, three of the four clubs remaining in the Cavan SFC have recent experience of Ulster senior club football. Gowna, Kingscourt and Crosserlough have all been there in the last few years and that matters. There is no mystery about what awaits.

Cuchulainns, meanwhile, reached the Ulster Intermediate final last year. If they were to win the Senior Championship in their first season back up, having already landed the ACFL Division 1 crown, it would perhaps be unfair to expect too much when they venture further afield but they certainly wouldn’t be going in blind either.

Secondly, the provincial draw has opened up to some extent. The Cavan champions will have home advantage against the Armagh winners. That will be no easy assignment but nor is it as daunting as some of the possibilities. Crossmaglen have accounted for the overwhelming majority of Armagh’s success in this competition; the last club from the county other than Cross to make a serious impression was Kieran McGeeney’s aforementioned Mullaghbawn back in 1995.

The winners of that tie will then face the champions of Antrim, Down or Tyrone and the significant development there is the absence of Kilcoo. The Magpies, who have stalked this competition almost every winter since 2011, were knocked out by Burren on Sunday. (Incidentally, Burren now face Clonduff, who have Castlerahan man Paul Smith in their ranks, in the Down county final.)

While it’s a lifetime in football terms, the opening round is just five weeks away. With a navigable path and one heavyweight on the Cavan winners’ side of the draw already gone, there are reasons for optimism that what has become an embarrassing trend can begin to be reversed.

Few would dare to dream of winning it outright but surely it’s long past time a Cavan club won a match in the crucible of Ulster club football?