Hughie Newman was one of Cavan's most inspirational players when the Anglo-Celt Cup was secured in 1969. He looks forward to the day when both his native Ballyhaise and the Breffni blues are back in the driving seat.

When Cavan won the Ulster SFC title in 1969, there were as many characters on the team as you'd find in a typical Walt Disney film.
Jockeying for position on the medal podium with Down, the Cavan team was more key stone (in Ulster's football family) than Keystone cops though.
Every player on the county panel took his role seriously. There was no question of the tail wagging the dog. Everyone knew their place.
"Self-discipline was a big thing with the manager of the time, Mick Higgins," says Hughie Newman, a seriously committed Breffni blue of the time.
"Players were trusted that they didn't mess about and put their fitness in danger, especially leading up to a big match.
"Herb Elliott, the famous runner from those days, said that Olympic titles were won in bed; meaning anyone wanting to be the best had to get their rest and their sleep."
Newman was the man who helped make swashbuckling such an addictive ingredient of Gaelic football in the sixties and early seventies.
He was a tearaway defender 'cum midfielder who easily caught the eye 'cause of his cavalier style of play and his distinctive fair hair.
The Ballyhaise clubman was a key member of the Cavan senior team that shocked then reigning All-Ireland champions Down in 1969.
The Mourne county came a cropper in the Ulster final of '69 which was played at a jam-packed Casement Park, Belfast.
Two years earlier, Cavan had also won the provincial title but lost out to Cork in the subsequent All-Ireland semi-final so the blues had form.
"We had a very good team but it wasn't considered by too many outside the county to be good enough to beat Down in '69," Hughie explains.
"They were hot favourites and it was a tremendous warm day. I remember Mick Higgins hardly made the match at all 'cause he got caught up in the traffic going to the match.
"Most of the talking Higgins and TP O'Reilly needed to do though had been done the previous Thursday so there wasn't a lot to be said anyway on the day of the match."
Unsurprisingly in an inter-county career that lasted from 1967 'till 1974, the 1969 Ulster SFC final win is fingered by Newman as the highlight of his career.
His time with Cavan was coloured by the 'what might have been syndrome' too though as the Breffni county failed to nab the Sam Maguire Cup.
"I thought that '69 team might have been good enough to have gone the distance but it wasn't to be.
"We lost to Offaly by three points in the replay of the All-Ireland semi-final that year when we really should have beaten them the first day.
"It's hard to know what way things would have went if we had made the final but I definitely think we would have given Kerry a hell of a game.
"We would have been confident playing against any team back then and, against Kerry, our fellas would definitely have raised their game."
Called up to the senior county squad just a few weeks after the '67 provincial title success, he made his debut for Cavan in a national league match against Longford who were the then defending national league champions.
Before his call-up, he cut his teeth with Ballyhaise as a full-back, centre-back and, down the line, a midfielder of great strength, power and determination.
His natural home was in the centre of the field and he quickly nailed down a place in the engine room of the Cavan senior team.
In the autumn of 1968, Newman helped himself to a Dr. McKenna Cup medal (with a win over Down) to add to his provincial championship medal.
"It was nearly always us and Down in the provincial finals during the sixties and early seventies after Tyrone slipped a bit from being up on a high with the likes of Iggy Jones in the early sixties.
"I remember Charlie Gallagher saying "just send the jersey down and that'll do." What he meant by that was that maybe, other than Down, all the other teams in Ulster seemed to be in awe of us when we played them and that the sight of the jersey was enough to shake their confidence."
Reflecting on the players he crashed, banged and walloped into in the blue of Cavan, names like Colm McAlarney (Down), Larry Diamond (Derry) and Seamus Lagan (Derry) come tripping off Newman's tongue.
Now 65 years young, the uncle of former Ulster U21 medallist Roy Brennan (Bailieboro) is at a loss to explain why the fortunes of Cavan football have nosedived over the last 40 years.
"I don't know what has happened and I don't have the solution either," the former county star explains.
"There's been so many managers over the years they can't all have been bad so maybe you have to look at the players who played for the county.
"In our day, you were mighty glad to get picked on the team and you wouldn't say boo to the likes of Mick Higgins.
"I think that over the last while, the tail has been wagging the dog a bit at county level and players are too hard to please nowadays."
Born into a farming family where Gaelic football was part of the staple diet, Newman's father Patrick was a passionate follower of the gaelic game.
He also played a fair bit too, with Cavan Slashers and Cavan Harps. Newman senior and his wife Molly encouraged Hughie all the way as they say.
Hughie Newman had a great engine. In modern day parlance, he was a box-to-box type player whose energy and will-to-win was peerless.
As they say around Castletara, Ballyhaise, Drung and beyond, he didn't pick it up off the ground though.
His uncle Michael Brady was an All-Ireland 1500 metres champion and only for a contentious ban which existed at the time which denied athletes from certain organisations partaking in Gaelic games, the aforementioned Brady would doubtless have figured on the Sam Maguire Cup-winning Cavan team of 1952.
As for his time on the intercounty scene, Hughie Newman bowed out from that stage in 1974, having found the demands of training a mite difficult to juggle with his duties on the farm.
"Like many another player, I found I was only half the player I should have been when I didn't get to do the training with the county."
Shelving his time with Cavan didn't unduly effect his club career. If anything, it helped propel into the maelstrom of affairs at Ballyhaise GFC as a coach/manager.
Throughout his playing career, Hughie had demonstrated a degree of leadership, character and ambition which was positively infectious and which he attempted to weave into the club teams in Ballyhaise under his stewardship following his retirement as a player.
Predictably, his failure to land a SFC medal with Ballyhaise is a regret but he confesses that he thoroughly enjoyed his time mixing it with the best of midfielders in Cavan.
"We should have beaten St. Mary's in the county final of '74. We were the hot favourites going into that game. After that we lost out to Cavan Gaels in the final the year after that" says Hughie who hung up his boots for good at the age of 30 in 1975.
"We had won the Junior league final against Gowna in 1966 and then the intermediate after that and we thought we were good enough to do the same at senior."
Sadly for Ballyhaise, Hughie hurt himself at training in the week leading up to the county final duel with St. Mary's and lasted just 20 minutes of the decider before having to retire injured.
"We were the better team on the day but didn't put enough between the posts. Goals win matches and they got them."
Names like Johnny Geraghty (Ramor Utd), Frank McKiernan (Lacken Celtic), Hughie McInerney (Redhills) and Brian Johnston (Redhills) sprinkle Hughie's memories of great personal duels at club level in Cavan.
He had great players around him at club and county level but also played against the very best of players countywide, provincewide and countrywide.
After his playing career was over, he mentored Ballyhaise's senior panel for several seasons.
He is still an ardent follower of Gaelic football and looks forward to the day when Ballyhaise and Cavan get among the silverware at the top level again. Tweet

Most Read Stories