Pat Clarke was one of Bailieboro's finest club players of modern times. He is also the proud holder of an Ulster senior football championship medal. By his own admission, Bailieboro native Pat Clarke never quite fulfilled his potential as a player with the Cavan senior county football team during the 'fifties and 'sixties. Regrets? Sure he has a few but then again too few to mention. As is his wont, he ain't pointing any fingers in any man's direction either. Falling short of the target was his fault alone. "I suppose if I was as mature back then as I am now, I'd have stuck it out with the county longer than I did but you can't change the past," the 1962 Ulster SFC medallist reflects. "I was glad I was there on the county scene for the four years but my county career could have been longer but I wasn't bold enough to go for every ball the way I should have. "I regret that I didn't play to my potential when I got the chance to line out for Cavan. Maybe I could have gotten a better deal at times but maybe I didn't read the game well enough." Down's George Lavery read the game excellently though, Pat recalls. Lavery marked corner-forward Pat out of the game completely once upon a time in a McKenna Cup clash. Lavery had a great positional sense; could almost be where the ball was before it landed. Pat reckons he lacked those qualities and he was a lesser footballer for all that. It's easy to conclude that Pat didn't ooze confidence in himself while in the famed blue jersey. He doesn't quite go that far though. Instead he says he was a different player with Cavan. "I had confidence playing with the club but it I didn't find it easy to play as well with Cavan. I think with Cavan you were playing with new team-mates and a different style and position. "I felt I wasn't fit for the county team at full-forward but because I was able to score a few goals for the club, the county selectors must have thought I was a better forward than a back." And yet he made his mark with Cavan up front, however briefly. One Bailieboro veteran recalls seeing his colleage getting rave headlines in one of the national players at one time. Pat hit all the high notes in a national league game against Westmeath and his feat in notching three goals drew comparisons, from one scribe, with the legendary Peter Donohoe. Sadly the very next game, Pat found himself out in the cold. For Cavan's league play-off contest with Dublin, the teak-tough Shamrock found himself warming the substitutes bench. All told, the dye-hard Bailieboro clubman had a bitter-sweet experience overall with Cavan between 1958 and '62. He confesses that he was more of fringe player than a first-choicer. Ravaged by back trouble all his adult life, Pat won an Ulster SFC medal with Cavan in 1962 - two years after the county reached the National Football League decider. Typically, he insists he was more of an outsider looking in during that successful championship run of '62. His memory of getting the call-up that year is still a vivid one though: "I was dropped off the panel at first. Then one evening I was sitting in Dan Reilly's Snug Bar and the word came through that someone on the (Cavan) team had got injuried. "I was approached and asked to make myself available for the championship match against Antrim in Casement Park. I was always ambitious to play for my county and I said yes." In truth, he found playing for Cavan difficult in several ways; not least because of the step up in class between playing for the Shamrocks and facing some of the top players nationally. "I remember one of my first games was a challenge game against Sligo. I never got a kick of the ball in the corner-forward position. It was a real eye-opener for me at the time. "They had a big, strong team and one fella in particular, a man called Newton, must have been over six foot six. The football was fast and tough at the same time," Pat remembers. Back in the late 'fifties, Pat had fellow Bailieboro clubmen like Fr. Vincent Reilly and Martin Kelly for company on the Cavan squad. "I was never a regular though," he emphasises. "The half-back line was where I preferred to play but I only got my wish when playing for Bailieboro. The likes of James Brady (Arva) was ahead of me in the pecking order for Cavan. "I played at full-forward and on the 'forty for Bailieboro too but most of the time it was at centre-back and that was where I got the best enjoyment playing football. "I remember great duels with Cootehill Celtic. They were probably the best team in Cavan for most of the 'fifties. Like us they were a town team and liked to play good football. "They had men like Gerry Keyes, Seamus McElroy and Brian and Charlie Gallagher. We had some fantastic games against Cootehill, Mullahoran and Cornafean back then." Pat tells of how he invariably lined out by the Bailieboro think-tanks at full-forward "till Donal Kelly went off to England which was an awful loss to the club and the county." Brother of like-minded gaels John, Jim and Benny (a former 'keeper with the Cavan juniors), Pat was somewhat of a late developer as regards exhibiting his football prowess. He played only a smattering of games at minor level for Bailieboro and didn't actually get recognised by Cavan at the under 18 grade. During his early days as a senior however he did somehow manage to play in the semi-finals of the Kilkenny SFC and in the Lancashire county championship! After three games at junior level, as an eager-beaver corner back, for Bailieboro saw him quickly elevated to the Shamrocks' senior team along with Tommy Leddy and Vincent Reilly. "Unfortunately we lost the 1956 county final to Cornafean. I hurt my knee in the run-up to the game and was only able to play the first three or four minutes of the final before going off. "We won nothing 'till '57 when we beat Cootehill in Breffni Park. That was a bit of a shock result at that time. They would have been favourites to win that one. "I remember I couldn't believe the height of the grass. It must have been nine inches high. It was a disgrace the way the county final was looked upon at that time." Clarke and co. teamed up again to get the better of Cootehill in 1964 also. Interestingly, Pat reckons that '64 triumph was probably the highlight of his senior football career. "I enjoyed winning the second senior championship more, probably because I was the captain of the team. It was just sweeter second time around and against a very good Cootehill." And yet, the Cavan days he dreamt never really materialised for all his high-profile days with his home town team. He would have loved to have played centre back for Cavan. "Tom Maguire was probably the best Cavan player I played alongside back then. He was big, very strong and had a great pair of hands. "The only thing was he was playing for the county team at centre-back where I would have loved to have played. I was never going to shift him from that spot. "I did play centre-back for a few minutes in one game for Cavan but that was about it," the former long-time underage Bailieboro mentor laments. How does the football nowadays compare with the type of game that was de rigeur during Pat's hey-day? "The football then was a lot slower and we didn't do nearly the same amount of training that players do nowadays. People say the football was better then but I don't think so. "Having said that, I think the club football in Cavan was better then than what you see in the county nowadays. Players were more dedicated and the football was tougher years ago. "When you were coming up against Connie Halton (Mullahoran) you had to be prepared to take a lot of physical stuff and go on about your business no matter about the ref." Cavan and Bailieboro have had better days. Pat's days saw both outfits arguably at their peak. Can he see them both getting back to the top of the tree? "I hope so but Cavan need about another four big men. Two centre-fielders and a man on the 'forty and a full-forward. "Bailieboro have been doing a lot of good work at underage level and there's a lot of good stuff on the way up and hopefully they'll all be good enough to do the business at senior level." And his proudest moment? "When Bailieboro last won the senior championship, my son Finbar was on the team. I was the only man of the '57 team to have a son on that team. "They got to the Ulster club final and could have won it but they had a goal disallowed at the end but that's another story." Perhaps one for a book Pat? Tweet

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