By his own admission, Lavey's Johnny Cusack is one of a dying brigade. . .and more's the pity we should say. A survivor from the all-conquering Cavan senior football team of 1952, the former flying forward remembers when all associated with the last team from the Breffni County to win the Sam Maguire Cup were all hail and hearty and, in truth, an unbeatable bunch for a time. Time waits for no man though and slowly but surely members of the famous '52 Cavan squad are making their way to play the second half in a place where our faith tells us everyone's a winner. Thankfully Johnny and quite a few others are still alive and kicking on this earth. He's enjoying life in the sort of retirement mode so common of farmers who can't quite get things agricultural out of their system despite the passage of time. Everyone with a gra for football in Cavan and all those who know the affable Cusack will be hoping that Johnny is in the best of form when the powers-that-be get around to kick-starting the planned commemoration of Cavan's brilliant championship success of almost 50 years ago. Though he may be approaching the three-quarters of a century mark, Johnny has the memory of a chap 50 years younger - just one reason why the former wing-wizard makes for a good interviewee. After all, there ain't too many people who can vividly recall events which occurred 50 years ago. However when one is talking about an all-Ireland final and the lie of the land around that time, one imagines that things would indeed tend to come into focus with greater clarity. And thankfully as far as Johnny is concerned, the games against Meath in '52 still paint a quite vivid picture. "Both games were played on real wet days and were typical local derby matches with no quarter asked or given although there was nothing dirty about the play. "Meath had hard luck in the first game and I suppose the way we got the equaliser was as much a surprise to us as it was to them. "I remember Edwin Carolan got possession near the end line and although he didn't look to have much of a chance of getting in his shot never mind scoring, he fired over a great point from an impossible angle which drew the match for us. Only for his score, I wouldn't have won an all-Ireland medal." But did the Breffni Blues deserve to get another bite of the cherry? "I think so. We got a lot of possession that day and had enough chances to win the game but we had to work hard to get a draw in the end." Johnny's foray in Croker in 1952 wasn't his first or only visit to headquarters. He had earlier played with Cavan in a couple of national league semi-finals so he was quite accustomed to the big-match atmosphere which enveloped Jones' Road. Uncle of 1969 Ulster Championship winning medalist Gene Cusack, Johnny didn't manage to get a game the first day against the Royal County but he did play from the start in the replay. Obviously keen to re-arrange matters, Cavan team-trainer Hughie Reilly (Cootehill Celtic) decided to draft in Mullahoran's Tom Hardy into the midfield sector as a replacement for Paul Fitzsimons of Maghera. In the reshuffle, the young Lavey attacker was slotted into the full-forward line. Did his call-up to the first fifteen catch him by surprise? "A bit. I hadn't been that disappointed at not making the team the first day because it was very hard to make your way onto the team at the time because there were so many good players on the panel. "I was playing well against some of the more established players in some of the games we had during our training sessions and so I was hoping I'd get a run at some stage in the replay. Being started was a bonus really and luckily I adapted well to the call-up. It was great to play in an All-Ireland final." Having been virtually sidelined through injury during '48 and '49, Johnny's elevation to the famous 1952 team made his medal-winning achievement all the more laudable. A niggling knee injury was rested by Johnny over the course of 1948 and '49 and that rest duly did the trick. He was therefore able to strive to recover the form he had shown in 1947 when he played alongside the likes of Edwin Carolan and the 'Gunner' Brady on the county junior team of that year which lost out to Fermanagh. Again the nature of the proceedings in the final are clear in his mind: "The Cavan-Meath game was a bit unique in that you had the Maguire brothers represented on both teams in the final while Connie Kelly who played with Mountnugent lined out for Meath at centre-half. Dessie and Liam Maguire played for Cavan while their brother Brendan was a key man for Meath. "I remember Brendan played very well in the drawn game but for the replay, Tommy Hardy put the shackles on him and that made a big difference." A winner also of Ulster Senior Football Championship medals in 1954 and '55 (Cavan lost out to Armagh in the final of '53), Johnny continued his love affair with the premier Cavan side 'till 1955. He confesses that he enjoyed every minute of his time with the county seniors: "Those were great days - there was a great sense of camaraderie between the players on the county team. Training under Hughie Reilly was a hell of an experience because he had no favourites and everyone was treated the same and everyone looked up to him and respected him for what he had achieved as a player and a trainer." And how did he take to Hughie's training regime? "It was tough but it wasn't too tough all the same and I enjoyed it. The training Cavan used to do before 1946 wasn't up to much because the county could usually get by with winning the Ulster title without too much training. "The training was stepped up after Antrim beat Cavan in the championship in '46 when the likes of Kevin Armstrong and Sean Gallagher proved too hot to handle. "After the defeat to Antrim, the training became a lot more intensive and professional and the players went full-time for a fortnight before a really big match. "I remember staying in the hotel in Virginia while we trained full time. We'd get up at about 7.30 in the morning and go for a three mile run and then come back to the hotel where we'd have a break 'till 9.30. We'd be back togged out in the local field at around eleven o'clock and then train away 'till 12.30. "We'd have lunch at one o'clock and then rest 'till three o'clock. Then we'd do a lot of sprints and a have a practice match 'till about six o'clock. We'd finish up then before heading for a walk at around 9.30 before making our way to bed at about 10.30 that night," adds the former star attacker. Cavan football was good for Johnny but Johnny was good for Cavan football too. It was a mutually beneficial relationship between both for the guts of eight years. Johnny's versatility, his speed and his football brain were deemed to be invaluable at the time. Colleagues back then recall how he was charged with dove-tailing great players of the time like Tyrone's Iggy Jones and Armagh's Bill McCorry. He was often relocated from his attacking berth to perform such functions. Needless to say, the county star was also a shining light on the club scene. Lavey only managed to win one senior championship title in Johnny's time. That was in 1951, a year in which his brother Gene also starred for Lavey and a year after he acted as player/trainer of the team which lifted the county junior title. "We'd have won another few senior championship titles only for Cootehill. They always seemed to be able to pick up a player or two every year from elsewhere which gave them a great lift. Dinny Brosnan was one such player and Gerry Curran was another. "The Cootehill teams of the 'fifties were great teams though and the battles we had with them still stand out in my memory." Johnny went on to act as the trainer of the Lavey team which won the county junior championship title in 1975. Great players like Seamus Treacy, Andy Smith, Tony Smith and J.J. Maguire plus Jimmy Galligan formed the backbone of his title-winning side back then. Johnny is sorry though that the same squad didn't progress to win the intermediate championship thereafter. The former Cavan star still enjoys watching Gaelic football and, on occasions, makes the trip to high-profile matches. He attended the 2001 Ulster final defeat to Tyrone and also the Cavan versus Kerry All-Ireland semi-final in 1997. He sincerely hopes that the Breffni Blues will afford him and the rest of the GAA fraternity in Cavan the opportunity to visit Croker again in the not too distant future. Tweet

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