Fitzpatrick: Will the old order re-assert their power in the new game?

Talk of the ‘big three’ in Cavan senior football disappeared very quickly when Kingscourt Stars executed a very public ambush of Gowna in last year’s county final. Until then, the label was entirely justified.

From 2020 to 2024, five seasons, no team other than Gowna, Ramor United and Crosserlough got their hands on either the Senior Championship or All-County League Division 1 titles.

That era ended on October 12 last year. Ten months on, the Stars, as we wrote last week, have gone from hunters to hunted and, while the deposed trio lead the chase, others are beginning to enter the equation.

Now, if the All-Ireland SFC taught us one thing, it is that nobody truly understands the new game just yet. Two years ago, Ulster teams won everything there was to be won – senior, U20 and minor All-Irelands, all three club titles, the Hogan Cup and even the Sigerson.

This year, no major titles came to the northern province. One theory is that Ulster coaches were better at controlling the old game than anyone else – and the new rules have taken away some of that control. It is still possible to set up a team to be difficult to break down but it is much harder to dictate the terms of engagement in the way teams once could.

Suddenly, the rewards for taking risks out-weigh the dangers. More than anything, the scoring system has fundamentally changed, with two-pointers now absolutely essential for any team hoping to win anything. In ways, every sporting competition is like a riddle, or a whodunnit, and the final usually provides the answer. In this year’s All-Ireland Championship, Mayo did that and it’s interesting to reflect on how.

That day, Andy Moran’s men had 14 attempts from outside the arc, proving that it is worth taking pot shots from that sort of range. After all, a 41% conversion rate from beyond 40 metres is worth more on the scoreboard than converting 80% of your shots from 39 metres or closer. That skews the mathematics of Gaelic football completely.

The other lesson from the All-Ireland was just as significant: pressing football is now winning football. In some ways, the game could become like rugby in that the tacklers and stoppers play further forward, with the ball-players and finishers coming from deep and place-kickers absolutely key.

That works both ways. Skills on the ball are needed to bypass the press at the other end, too, as teams look to build from the back.

The point of this tactical detour is that we may be underestimating the scale of what has happened. This isn’t the old game with a few new rules bolted on. Forget new rules – it’s a new sport.

How much stock, then, can we place in what happened in the past? Probably much less than most followers appreciate. 2025 was Gaelic football’s year zero. The old roll of honour still matters, of course, but its value as a guide to what happens next has diminished dramatically.

Very, very few predicted Mayo to win the All-Ireland at the start of the season. Very few fancied them on the morning of the final. Even midway through the first half, there was little reason to believe they would win it. All of those assumptions were based on what we thought we knew about Mayo and about Gaelic football. It turns out we knew very little.

Social mobility hasn’t been this high within Gaelic football since the 1990s. Sam rests in Mayo, Louth are Leinster champions, Roscommon won Connacht the hard way. Of the 10 trophies available at inter-county level – the four provincial championships, four divisions of the National League, the All-Ireland and Tailteann Cup – there were 10 different winners this year.

In this egalitarian football world, the smart money says there will be numerous ‘shock’ champions around the country in the various county championships in the coming weeks and months. So why should Cavan be immune?

The four big guns aside, Arva and Cuchulainns, both currently rated as 10/1 shots with the bookmakers, could be the best of the rest – but could they be the best of all?

Four years ago, Arva were beaten in the Junior Championship final and were where they were on merit.

Now they find themselves going well in the Senior Championship and dreaming of further glory. Their body of work is extraordinary: since the start of 2022, they have played 38 championship matches, winning 33 with just five losses. Of those defeats, three were by a point and one – last year’s SFC quarter-final against Crosserlough – was by four.

There was one bad day out, when Ramor put six goals past them. That was the only one of those 38 matches which captain Ciaran Brady missed; read into that what you will.

What about the argument that anything pre 2024 is irrelevant? For our money, it still holds. But what their remarkable record shows is that Arva are very, very hard to beat, they are in the habit of winning matches and they are extremely consistent.

Their great strength in this new landscape is their array of two-point kickers. Kevin Bouchier, Jack Dobson, Conal Sheridan, Johnny McCabe, Peter Morris, Barry Donnelly, Tristan Noack Hofmann and Cian O’Hara can all nail them with regularity.

The only other side to match them for momentum as we write is Cuchulainns. Last year, they became the first team to win all seven matches in the Intermediate Championship since the current structure was introduced in 2016. After a long number of years trying to win that, they pushed on, recording two wins in Ulster, including a sensational victory over All-Ireland favourites Clonoe of Tyrone.

This year, they won the All-County League the hard way, beating Ramor United to make the last four, then Crosserlough in the semi-final and Gowna in the decider.

Ramor, Crosserlough and Gowna, one after another. The erstwhile big three, slain – but it was only league. Could they follow up?

They opened their assault on the SFC with a win over Laragh but the come-from-behind victory against Ramor last time out felt like a statement.

They, too, tick a lot of boxes. The pace of the two Nialls, Magee and Carolan, is exceptional; goalkeeper Ryan Lennon has excelled and is a threat on place-kicks, while in Bryan Magee, Evan Doughty (currently injured) and Adam O’Reilly they have three reliable scoring forwards from outside the arc.

More than that, though, they have the athleticism and mobility to thrive in a game which now requires that and more. The likes of Philip Smyth and Turlough Farrelly embody this: young, well-conditioned, motivated and well-schooled footballers with county underage pedigree.

Some will make the case for others in the middle classes to rise up – a defiant Cavan Gaels, led by the outstanding Emmanuel Shehu; Killygarry, maybe, with their stellar attack; Mullahoran or Ballyhaise.

But if the aristocrats – Kingscourt, Gowna, Crosserlough and Ramor, winners of eight of the last 11 championships between them – are to be overthrown, Arva and Cuchulainns look best equipped to storm the gates.

Four years ago, Arva were a junior team who looked past their best and Cuchulainns were stuck in intermediate with a Mayo-like reputation as flaky when it came to getting it done. In this new version of Gaelic football, either could feasibly be senior champions of Cavan in 2026 – or, in a few weeks’ time, with the benefit of hindsight, such speculation might appear the height of nonsense.

The championship, we can safely say, is shaping up nicely…