Cavan won four Ulster under-21 titles in a row between 2011 and 2014.
The hope in the Breffni County was that the stars of those triumphs would become stars of the county’s senior team and lift them out of the slump that they’d been in for quite some time.
It hasn’t turned out that way.
It’s seven years on from the first of those triumphs now and still, Ulster’s most successful football county hasn’t made it to a provincial final since 2001.
The worst thing about it all is that a large portion of those successful under-21 players aren’t even involved with the county anymore. Mickey Graham, the man most recently tasked with bringing the good times back to Cavan, was on The GAA Hour Show on Thursday and he helped to explain why those under-21 players didn’t make transform the fortunes of Cavan football.
“In every county after under-21, lads drift away from the game and fall out of love with it. You’ve a lot of lads emigrating and looking to go travelling and other lads then just aren’t enjoying it – that huge commitment for senior football – some lads don’t have the commitment for that because it’s either all or nothing,” said the new Cavan manager.
The defensive Cavan style has played a big part in that too, said Graham, the current Mullinalaghta manager.
“Then also, the style of play that Cavan has had for the last number of years – a lot of lads weren’t enjoying it…
“I suppose that time, Cavan, they needed a bit of success underage and they did what they had to do to win them. They played a defensive brand of football and it got them the results, those four Ulster titles.
“Did they lose players because of that? Probably. In those teams there would have been defenders playing as wing forwards and forwards, natural forwards, they weren’t able to play their natural game. Naturally, those lads just drifted away from it…That’s no fault of the fellas over them teams…”
The turnover of players in the Cavan seniors has been huge over the last few years, and Graham wants to bring some stability and consistency to the set-up next year.
“It’s worrying from a Cavan point of view that we’ve lost so many players. Even the last number of years, your panels have changed by 12 to 15 players every one of those years, you just don’t seem to have a consistency of a panel every year.
“You’re trying to build a team and it’s not going to happen within three or four months. It’s going to take 12/18 months to get lads up to the standard required to play inter-county football – unfortunately, there’s been such a turnover of players that Cavan haven’t been able to do that.
“It’s something we’ll be hoping to do moving forward…We’ll be looking to hold on to lads more-so than letting them go.”
You can listen to the Mickey Graham interview, the Kieran Molloy interview and the Robbie Brennan interview from Thursday’s GAA Hour Show here.
