Fitzpatrick: Maturing Gowna well-placed for Ulster assault

Paul Fitzpatrick

At half-time in the senior final on Sunday, the Cavan Gaels team of 2001 was introduced. For club footballers of a certain vintage in the county, the sight of them probably induced tremors.

That group, impossibly young at the time, were there at the start of a scarcely-believable run for the Gaels. They would contest 14 county finals in 15 years, winning 10 championships in all between 2001 and 2017.

Their players were household names in Cavan and at times they boasted a sizeable contingent – close to 10 players - on the county panel. Such was their dominance that they spooked the opposition which meant that even on their bad days, which were rare, other sides in the county found them very hard to beat.

There was, of course, an obvious symmetry to how the final itself unfolded as Gowna affirmed their position as the county’s most dominant team since Cavan Gaels’ pomp. Neat parallels are always tempting – 25 years since one great team started out, another follows suit – but in this instance, the timeline doesn’t quite fit.

The reality is that Gowna’s run began five years ago when they stormed through the county championship before falling to Ramor in a replayed final.

Thirteen of those who featured in those deciders were on the field on Sunday as Gowna beat Kingscourt by 15 points with a performance for the ages. In the build-up, while Gowna were strongly fancied, most predicted a tight match - but early on, it became obvious that Gowna had gone to another level.

The average age of the Gowna team was 23 and here they were, picking up their third Senior Championship, which is a historical outlier. There have been young sides in the past but never one as young as Gowna to retain the title, as they did three years ago with a 17-point win over Kingscourt in the final.

After that match, captain Ryan McGahern’s thoughts turned to the impending Ulster Championship campaign. A year earlier, Gowna had lost in a penalty shoot-out at Brewster Park against Enniskillen Gaels.

“I’d be a bit disappointed the way people in Ulster don’t really think much of Cavan football and we don’t represent ourselves well when we go into Ulster,” he said.

“I suppose we were very disappointed last year, we thought we were the best team on the day against Enniskillen. I didn’t agree with penalty shoot-outs before that but I definitely didn’t agree with it afterwards,” he said with the sort of droll delivery on which his brother, comedian Kevin, has built a successful career.

As it turned out, Gowna played well against Donegal giants Naomh Conaill before coming undone with a classic late haymaker, seconds before the bell, which left them sprawled on the canvas having been ahead on points.

Ulster football is claustrophobic. Interest is so high and the circuit of managers, coaches and so on so fluid that by Monday morning, word had already got round about Gowna’s performance. When the bookmakers’ odds were updated, they were posted as 8/1 to become the first Cavan club to lift the Ulster Club SFC title.

Cavan, as it happens, boast a strong triumvirate for the provincial competitions this year. Lacken are vastly experienced and won the Junior Championship with more than a bit in hand; Butlersbridge are a lot younger but, like Cuchulainns last year, have served their apprenticeship and are well qualified for an Ulster intermediate run at this point.

But what a boost it would be for a Cavan senior club to get a run over the winter. The sequence of first-round exits in that grade has gone on so long now as to feel almost careless. And Cavan Gaels’ failure to get it done in their heyday, we would argue, actually demoralised the other clubs. If the Gaels couldn’t do it, the consensus went, then no-one could.

Cavan Gaels, with a good draw, won two matches en route to the final in 2017. Otherwise, no Cavan club has won so much as one match since 2009 – and outside of the Terry Coyle Park men, shockingly, the last Cavan win was in 2002 when Gowna beat Clontibret by a point.

Playing for the Monaghan champions on that occasion was Vinny Corey, just 19 and a year shy of his inter-county debut. Corey went on to line out for the Farney at senior level for 17 seasons; he’s now retired seven years from county football, had a stint managing Monaghan and is in his second campaign in charge of Gowna. It feels like a lifetime has passed – and still the wait for a win goes on.

Crossmaglen await. Like Gowna, they won their first county title since 2023 at the weekend. Unlike Gowna, they have vast provincial pedigree.

But there is a general consensus that the current crop is not vintage; while their attack is star-studded, they have leaked a lot of scores.

Sunday was revelatory. It’s now clear that Gowna arrived ahead of schedule five years ago. They won two championships while still developing physically and tactically, endured the disappointment of losing finals and have emerged as a more complete side. The frightening thing for everyone else is that they are still so young and are still improving.

The level of form from the quarter-finals on – one-sided wins over the other three recent champions in Ramor, Crosserlough and Kingscourt – hasn’t been seen in Cavan since at least 2011, when Cavan Gaels turned back Kingscourt, Ballinagh and, by 16 points in the final, Castlerahan in successive matches.

The Gaels were caught on the finish line by a Michael Murphy-inspired Glenswilly on that occasion. That Cavan Gaels side were a truly great team but their inability to make a major impact in Ulster, a belated final appearance with an ageing line-up aside, remains a disappointment.

Such was the Gaels’ longevity that there were a couple of different iterations. Gowna, it feels now, are in the second wave. The callowness of recent years has been dispelled; the hurt of losing a couple of finals has steeled them yet they are still young and have scope for improvement.

One thing is certain: This is the best club team to emerge in Cavan in the last 15 seasons, an assertion backed up by the stats – from 2012 to 2026 inclusive, no other side has won three championships.

The previous generation – literally in most cases – of successful Gowna footballers didn’t make the splash they could or should have in Ulster. While they won matches and were competitive, a final appearance eluded them. With so many of the sons and nephews of the 1988-2002 teams on board now, you can be sure there is a sense of unfinished business there.

Gowna could hardly be better placed, then, to do what no Cavan club has done before and win the Ulster Club Championship, if not this year then in the coming years – but they have to win a match first.

Ulster remains an unscaled mountain for Cavan senior clubs. Gowna simply have to believe they can survive at that altitude – what a blow it would be to the other Cavan clubs if it turns out they can’t – but the air will only get thinner from here.