Breaking: McCabe confirmed as new Cavan team manager

GAA

Dermot McCabe has been appointed as the new manager of the Cavan senior football team.

The management committee of Cavan county board, on the recommendation of a five-member sub-committee, have tonight ratified the Gowna clubman to replace Raymond Galligan in the bainisteoir bib.

While the move would technically have to be rubber-stamped by the county’s clubs, that is expected to be a formality when they meet next Monday night.

McCabe (49) is regarded as one of the county's greatest players of the modern era. He played at senior level for Cavan from 1994 to 2009, generally at midfield and sometimes at full-forward. He made 132 appearances, including 43 in the championship and 30 in the Ulster Championship, and finished with a tally of 16-228 to his name, of which 5-70 came in championship football.

He represented Ireland in the International Rules series on two occasions and won Ulster U21 and Senior Championship medals as a player as well as an All-Star award in 1997.

McCabe, who has been employed as Games Development Manager (retitled as Head of Games) for Cavan GAA since 2013, also won six Senior Championship medals as a player with Gowna.

Regarded as an astute football tactician, McCabe was joint-manager of the Cavan minors who won the Ulster Championship in 2011 and a selector with Cavan seniors from 2019 to 2021 inclusive, a period in which Cavan reached two Ulster finals, winning one, but were relegated three times in the National League including a first-ever demotion to Division 4.

The highlight of his term as selector under Mickey Graham was the 2020 Ulster final, when Cavan delivered a brilliant performance to defeat a strongly-fancied Donegal and claim the title for the first time in 23 years.

As joint-manager of his home club, McCabe won a Division 1 league and two Senior Championships. He was subsequently appointed as Westmeath senior manager last year and had to contend with the absence of several of the leading players.

While they were ultimately relegated with no wins in Division 2 and had a disappointing quarter-final exit in the Tailteann Cup, the general sense in the county was that they were performing creditably given the players they had lost and the Westmeath county board strongly wished to retain the Cavanman’s services.

That was the case right up until this morning, with Westmeath chairman Frank Mescall quoted in the Irish Independent as saying that they hoped he would remain in charge.

“We were happy anyway,” Mescall said.

“Okay, the results weren’t great but you look at the number of players that he introduced. The camp were a very, very happy squad – with the full management team, it’s not just Dermot, but Dermot led that team.”

Two candidates were nominated for the position by the clubs, with the other – Finbar O’Reilly – withdrawing from the process on Friday night, the eve of the scheduled interviews.

That meant that McCabe was the only candidate to be interviewed by the sub-committee, which consisted of Mark O'Rourke (chairman), Martin Cahill (Head of Operations/Secretary), Tom Moore (Treasurer), John Keating (vice-chairman) and Peter Reilly (former Cavan player and U21 manager).

Cahill had previously told the Anglo-Celt that the board's preference was to appoint either McCabe or O'Reilly but that they would consider others outside of those two should neither man not be considered the right fit. In the end, however, the committee were sufficiently impressed by McCabe's vision for the team to appoint him to the position, which brought to a conclusion the five-week process.

It is understood that McCabe has the support of some leading members of the county panel who played under him during his time as a selector and approached him on this occasion to encourage him to allow his name to go forward.

Unusually, candidates had been informed that the make-up of their respective backroom teams would not carry any weight in the decision-making process, which perhaps explains why no selectors, coaches etc have been named tonight, as is the general custom in other counties and previously in Cavan.

It has been speculated that McCabe may be joined by his assistant in Westmeath, Donegal All-Ireland winner Mark McHugh, son of Cavan's 1997 Ulster-winning manager Martin.