Time to reach for the stars
November 27, 2011Gary Donohoe reckons the time for Cavan Football Inc. to forget about looking to the past to invent the future might finally be here.
The 2011 joint-manager of the Ulster MFC-winning Cavan football squad says it's high time that gaels in Breffni-land started to reach for the stars.
Donohoe believes that far from harping on and on about the county's bluechip background and how its star has plummeted over the past 40 years, football fans in Cavan ought now to be looking to the future, once and for all, and proclaiming just how much hope is being offered them.
The hope that Donohoe alludes to has been spawned by the annexation of not only a minor provincial title in the past 12 months but of an under 21 Ulster title also.
Some observers might be a tad surprised to learn that Donohoe's ambition was far from sated by the minors' triumph in beating Ulster's finest.
Indeed, he strongly feels that any forensic analysis of how the west was won and subsequently lost by the minor team he managed in conjunction with clubmate Dermot McCabe (aided by selector Michael Reilly) would underpin the 'what might have been' theory he finds hard to disguise.
According to Donohoe, the reality of what transpired in 2011 tells a sobering tale. For him, Cavan's exit from the race to add the all-Ireland title to Ulster honours strains belief.
Simply said, the former Gowna ace believes the jarring fact, and legacy, of Cavan's odyssey at minor level in 2011 is that the players under-achieved.
"I'm disappointed with how the year turned out because I'm convinced we left it behind us," Donohoe says as he reflects on Cavan's defeat to Galway last August.
"To be honest, I'm still not over what happened in Longford in the (All-Ireland) quarter-final and the feeling I had when the final whistle went in that match will live in my memory for an awful long time."
Even now, almost four months on from the wreakage of a dream demolished at Pearse Park, Donohoe's dejection has definition and depth.
Not for him the party line so beloved of provincial title-winning managers that his charges emptied the tank and fulfilled their potential.
"I'm convinced we would have been good enough to beat Tipperary had we progressed to meet them in the all-Ireland final.
"We played them in a challenge before the under 21 final and even though we were short a couple of players, we beat them.
"I know it's a hypothetical thing, talking about what might have happened if we had beaten Galway but the form we were showing, compared to other teams who got further than us, makes you wonder all the same.
"Galway beat us, only just, and they were a good team but they hadn't as good as players as we had at our disposal.
"After that they pushed Dublin all the way and then they (Dublin) should have beaten Tipperary in the all-Ireland (final).
"We played Dublin twice in challenge matches and knew how much on a par we were with them. Overall, we played four games in eleven days before the Ulster championship match with Antrim and were confident going into the championship.
"I don't think we could be accused of being far off the mark in our assessment of how good we were in relation to the other teams because we played all of those in the running for the Tom Markham Cup and knew what they were like.
"Unfortunately, the fact is, at the end of the day, we didn't get to where we wanted to be at the end of September and that's a disappointment."
Donohoe is obviously convinced that Cavan had stronger teeth and sharper claws than they managed to show in their 2011 MFC campaign.
He believes also that post-mortems into the 0-9 to 1-9 defeat to Galway ought to include an examination of the management team's role.
"I wouldn't distance ourselves as a management team from the Galway game," he explains. "I was delighted for the supporters that the Ulster title was delivered but maybe they (Cavan supporters) could have reason to wonder whether the management team, as a collective unit, performed as well as we should have."
While the wounds suffered by Donohoe in Pearse Park still appear fresh, the pride he has in his charges' achievement in winning the Ulster title is unbridled and firmly stated.
"The bunch of players we worked with were capable of much more and should have got to the all-Ireland final in 2011.
"It was difficult to know when we held the trials last January what sort of squad we were going to have but we couldn't have been more pleased with the commitment and discipline they showed all year.
"I'm sure they will show their real capabilities down the line as long as they can get the sort of self-belief they need to go along with their obvious hunger and ambition."
Reflecting on the games played by Cavan in the championship, Donohoe says the team's first half performance against Antrim was as good as he witnessed all year.
Cavan's first step on their way to seizing a first Ulster MFC title since 1974 got up and running following with a 2-11 to 2-2 victory over the Saffrons at Pairc Esler in late May.
In an extraordinary game, the blues shone in the first half like a Cavan minor team has seldom, if ever, shone before over the past 40 years.
Everything the blues touched turned to gold to the extent that they led by 2-6 to no-score by half-time and were inexorably on their way to a semi-final meeting with Tyrone, conquerors of Monaghan on the same evening.
Encouraged to cite other epochal periods of Cavan-at-their-best in 2011, the Gowna man says the team's second half performance against Armagh in the Ulster decider (on the back of a 2-13 to 2-10 win over Tyrone in the penultimate round) also showcased some of the players' best attributes as players of promise.
"Holding one of the favourites for the all-Ireland scoreless in the second half was a brillant achievement and gave the lads a lot of confidence in advance of the Ulster final.
"Winning the Ulster final was great and the lads can rightly take a lot of pride in ending that 37 year gap but you could sense that they wanted to drive on from there and climb another couple of steps.
"Unfortunately, I don't think we hit the high notes consistently enough though in any of the games and, on too many occasions, basic handling errors let us down. Fair play to Galway, they took full advantage of those errors."
The naysayers and doomsday merchants who colour the GAA landscape in Cavan had a field day after the defeat to Galway.
To his credit, Donohoe gives them leverage that they were wont not to afford him and his think tank colleagues.
"There were critics on hand before we even got the trials underway last winter but they have them in Kerry too.
"I think in Cavan we have gotten into a habit of giving out rather than helping people along with a clap on the back.
"I know everyone wasn't on our side and maybe that's partly because of the county experiencing so many false dawns before at underage level.
"But I have no problem with the critics. They're entitled to their say.
"Our task is to keep the conveyor belt of talent going and if we can unearth and nurture the talents of two or three players every year from minor level and help them go on and make a definite contribution to the senior county team, then we'll have done something worthwhile, irrespective of what silverware that may or may not come our way." Tweet
