Fitzpatrick: Bridge’s time has arrived

Paul Fitzpatrick

Time slips by like a ghost – silent, unseeable. Ballyjamesduff on Saturday night and the pints were flowing as the Castlerahan Intermediate-winning team of 2001 came together to mark a quarter century.

On stage, Sean Brady recounted his memories. He turned 17 in the days before the final and ended up winning Player of the Year. It seems unthinkable now, impossible, but it happened.

Back then, Castlerahan moved slowly but steadily, like an advancing army, through the championship field, winning one game by a point, a narrow semi-final replay and, finally, a 0-10 to 2-2 replay victory over Drung. Fourteen scores in that game, each chiselled from granite.

Fast forward 25 years (give or take) and 29 minutes, and when Cathal Leddy galloped through the centre and fired over the bar for Butlersbridge, it was the 15th score of the 2026 Intermediate final and there would be two more before half-time, one a thunderous goal from a lad born, imagine this, in 2008.

Nathan Quigley’s strike cut the gap to the minimum after a breakneck first half and the build-up was worth noting for future reference. Caoláin McCabe, Denn’s dashing centre-back, won a kick-out uncontested and fed Thomas Edward Donohoe.

As ‘Ted’ drove in from the right, he spied Quigley approaching from the side and slowed down, checking his own run so as to hand off to the teenager. The schoolboy obliged, almost taking the roof off the net; the Denn supporters threatened to do likewise to the stand.

It brought to mind an incident five minutes into the 1991 All-Ireland hurling final, as noted by the hurling writer nonpareil, Denis Walsh.

“Christy Heffernan broke behind the Tipperary half-back line and headed for goal…” Walsh observed.

“From the corner of his eye, Heffernan spotted DJ Carey running in parallel, 15 yards to his right. Heffernan was captain of the team, playing in his fourth All-Ireland final but over-riding the imperative to take responsibility and shoot was the instinct to feed Carey.

“The handpass was overhit, the chance was lost.”

But it proved one thing, according to Walsh.

“At just 20 years of age, Carey had already been anointed a match-winner.”

There was something of that in Donohoe’s decision to hand the ball to Quigley. There was something of that, in fact, in the whole afternoon.

Maybe it was because these two clubs had already met in the Division 1 Minor Championship final a couple of months earlier, with some of the same young players involved, but there was a sense all week that this was going to be different, a final that would be referenced in serious tones in years to come. All finals are memorable but this, even as it unfolded, there was a feeling that we were watching something nascent.

When we arrived at the big house – the press stroll in via the tradesman’s entrance at the rear of the stand, hard-working types that we are – there was a first; No parking spaces.

“Hang around the track and someone will be leaving after the minor game,” we were instructed.

Luckily, we found a spot. Not many were leaving, though, ahead of the main event, especially not the Butlersbridge supporters who had just seen their U17s win the Division 2 title.

Whereas the Senior Championship final is an occasion usually drenched in tension – from 2012 to 2021, there were four draws and four one-score games – the Intermediate can tend to be free-wheeling.

That was the case here. We took notes at a furious rate because the action on the field was just that – unrelenting. From the throw-in, it was a match worthy of a final, an adornment on what has been another memorable renewal of the Intermediate Championship. This correspondent was part of a panel who lost a Junior Championship final against Butlersbridge 22 years ago. The first day was a draw, 1-6 to 0-9. Memory says Brendan Leddy punched the equaliser for us. The replay was off Broadway, in Ballyconnell for some reason, and the ’Bridge won well. They had claimed the Junior Championship two years earlier, with Paul McCorry as captain. They would win it again in 2009, with our late Anglo-Celt colleague Michael Cryan as selector. Mick toasted that one lustily.

That was the way for the ’Bridge for the longest time – a Junior Championship every now and then, a spell at the higher grade, then back down, like water finding its level.

That cycle has now been broken. The thought struck us leaving Breffni: when will Butlersbridge play junior football again? It’s hard to see it happening any time soon, given the age profile and quality of their current team, the numbers in their catchment area and the efficiency of their underage system at producing players. There was a neat link with the past in the closing minutes when Andy McConnell, 40, was introduced. He played wing-back on that 2004 Junior-winning side and has lasted the course this far. Twenty-two years on, here he was, collecting an Intermediate medal.

Captain Diarmuid McCorry, son of Paul, delivered a stirring speech afterwards, recalling the days the team lost and how they bounced back.

“When we get knocked down, we get back up again,” he said.

The pints flowed in the ’Bridge on Sunday night, too. Bonfires and blue flares and in the middle of it all, the Sean Leddy Cup, named in honour of one of the club’s greats and, as it happens, an uncle of the aforementioned Brendan.

Denn? They lost nothing in defeat, bar the match. They played well but, on the day, the winners were a bit better. Their future is bright.

For Butlersbridge, it’s about the present. A new reality has dawned. Ulster beckons – the last three Cavan intermediate champions have made the provincial final – and then senior football, with a young team and a club on a sound footing, ready to go at it.

There was a real sense that this wasn’t an end in itself but a milestone along the road. In the pen pics in the match programme, McConnell was asked his toughest opponent.

“Time,” he answered.

It hasn’t beaten him yet – and while he hasn't many more years playing, for Butlersbridge, this may just be the beginning.