Cavan has produced some quicksilver forwards over the years. Phil 'Lightning' Murray is up there at the top of the heap. Phil 'Lightning' Murray played in an age when most footballers had little respect for their opponent's body never mind their own! The former Cavan ace swears that if he had gotten a pound note for every time some terrified defender tried to terrorise him, both physically and verbally, he would have had enough money to buy one of the many cars he sold at work down the decades. It seems that these days, the vast majority of players have more respect for their foe and more respect for themselves to carry on with any nonsence before, during and after matches. These days would suit Phil just dandy. The soubriquet 'lightning' fits Murray like a surgeon's glove. There's no doubt the former Cavan Gaels livewire would be in his element playing the modern game. "It would probably be right up my street," the one-time mother-and-father of Gaelic football speed merchants concurs. "Looking at the likes of Sean Johnston and Mickey Graham and the kind of influence they've had on the game, I think I'd fit in nicely into the modern game. "When I was playing, it was mostly just catch and kick and half of the time you weren't sure when the ball would come your way and how it would come. "Now the players in front of you are encouraged to hold onto possession and to wait 'till they can place the forward in front of them with a decent ball. "It would have been interesting to play in a two-man full-forward line with all the room and space that that would give you." One can almost imagine Murray at his prime boring holes in the net in such an environment. Burying the ball from a half-chance. Born in the wrong era? You betcha. Cavan could be doing with some Murray magic right now. Like the rest of us, the man himself is more fed up than cut up about the Breffni county's ongoing woes. He invariably watches the blues' premier team from some distance now but his passion for football and for his native county remains intense and genuine. "I think we're still playing catch-up with the counties in the North when it comes to their underage structures and the quality of football they're playing at college level," 66-year old Phil muses. "The decline of St. Pat's (Cavan) as a force in football has been a major factor and even though Virginia (College) has done well over the last couple of years, I don't think we're up there with the likes of St. Pat's Maghera, St. Colman's Newry or some of the other big colleges across the border." An intelligent man who talks as good a game as he once played it, Phil believes Cavan haven't enjoyed the best of luck at minor level in recent years and that hasn't helped morale. He greatly regrets the fact that no Ulster MFC title has come Cavan's way since 1974 but points out that a fair sprinkling of the teams that knocked out Cavan's crack under 18s over the last few years either went onto win the provincial title or even the All-Ireland. "I know the game has changed since my time but you still need to have plenty of physically powerful players on a team to succeed," the long-time motor sales representative opines. "Cavan have gone for too many small, light players over the years in my book and that's from minor right up to senior. "I know I wasn't six foot or fourteen stone but when you had Ray Carolan, John Joe Reilly, Hughie Newman and Tom Lynch around, the team had a great physical presence. "Football is much more of a running game nowadays but you still need the power, especially down the middle of the park. Look at all of Sean Boylan's (Meath) teams, for example. "I think we need another three or four men with the same physique as Dermot McCabe to really make an impact at the highest level." Phil reckons the numbers game has been a difficult one for Cavan to master too. The population of the county is only 60,000, after all, he points out. It's clear the one-time ace goalpoacher is wont to view the glass as being half-full rather than half-empty when it comes to a prognosis of Cavan Football Inc. He admits that the ongoing domination of his own club of minor football in the county doesn't represent the idyll but, in the likes of Bailieboro, Kingscourt, Redhills, Ballyhaise and Lurgan, he sees a lot of young, emerging talent. "To my mind, there's a lot of outstanding underage players coming through and it's amazing what a bit of hard weight training could do to go along with their football ability. "The future for Cavan isn't as bleak as some people would make it out and it wouldn't take that much to get us back on top at senior level in the next few years. "You have to remember that we were unlucky to get a fair few matches away from home in the championship over the years but, definitely, we need to get back winning soon." Phil is a great believer in the mantra that 'success breeds success' and Cavan, he avers, needs silverware to help stir the ambitions of the youth of the county. He is fulsome in his praise for the work being carried out by Cavan County Board with regard to improving the quality and volume of coaching across the landscape. While he doesn't envisage the Anglo-Celt Cup meanderings its way Breffni-side in the coming year, he says 'you would never know what would happen at minor level and if we did land a minor (title), it would be a tremendous boost to the county." An Ulster SFC medallist on the back of triumphs in 1964, '67 and '69, Phil - a prodigy of the famed De La Salle mentor Brother Cyril knows all about what it takes to be a winner. Over the course of a senior intercounty career which stretched from 1962 'till 1971, he had a whale of a time in the famed royal blue before hanging up the boots at 39. Phil reckons the Cavan team of the 'sixties had an All-Ireland in them but sadly gravely underperformed and missed the boat on several occasions. Phil recalls his ascension to the senior county team. He made his bow in a challenge game against Dublin; only a matter of a few hours after featuring on a losing Cavan team (to Meath) in the All-Ireland JFC final. Among the other many stand-out moments of his career, he fingers the 1967 season with Cavan when "we should have won the All-Ireland but we lost out to Cork in the semi-final. "Cork went onto lose to Meath in the final. We beat them (Meath) a couple of times earlier in the year and we'd have fancied our chances of beating them in the All-Ireland. "The same year (1967) we went to Wembley for the Grounds Tournament and beat Galway who had won the Sam Maguire in 1966." Like fellow sharpshooters of the time like county colleague Charlie Gallagher, Offaly's Tony McTeague, Down's Sean O'Neill and Galway's Liam Sammon, the bold Murray was a fans' favourite and a household name. He was born and reared into a Gaelic football-friendly family although all belonging to him were quite dapper at Association Football too. His father John Murray was a fine player with The Strollers in Cavan Town. His uncle Joey was a Drumalee stalwart while those who followed young Lightning's career likened him most to another uncle Phildy Murray from Crubany. Because of his notoriety, he was, of course, a marked man on the field of play though sometimes when he was crocked, it was self-inflicted. He recalls taking part in the pre-match 'kickabout' before the 1965 Ulster SFC final when, as ever, Down formed the opposition. It wasn't long before he collapsed to the ground in pain affer injuring his knee-cap. Incredibly he played 'till half-time before agreeing with team-manager Mick Higgins that his day was over. His damaged knee was subsequently in plaster for six weeks. Then there was the occasion when a Donegal player gave Phil a going-over in a championship match at Breffni. Phil's team-mate John Joe Reilly duly returned the compliment before the half-time whistle sounded. Over forty years later, the same Donegal player introduced himself to a certain Cavan man (not Phil) at a soccer match at Landsdowne Road. He asked the Cavan man whether he knew Phil Murray and when the answer was in the affirmative, the son of Tir Chonaill promptly pointed to his mouth to prove how he was relieved of two front teeth by dint of having 'tackled' Phil in that championship match decades earlier! As they say, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction! Tweet

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