By Declan Coyle, December 2024

No Ulster county comes near Cavan’s ‘Ulster Champions’ tally – 40 in all. In the 30s, 40s 50s and into the 60s they almost felt the Anglo Celt Cup really belonged to them. Two pupils of Ballinacree National School played in the 1969 Ulster Final victory. Declan Coyle recalls:

I was at a “do” in the Ballinacree Community Centre a few years ago when Tom Hennessy cornered me. He had a few things to clarify such as not to forget that even if Tom Lynch and myself had won Ulster Final medals playing senior for Cavan it was “out there in that schoolyard” that the Ballinacree boys taught us how to play football. “That,” he said “was your footballing nursery. You pair of boys owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Ballinacree lads for teaching you the basics and giving the two of you a passion for playing Gaelic football.” 

Tom of course was right. And we do owe a huge debt of gratitude to those ferocious lunchtime games and three-goals-in.  We couldn’t wait to get going. We’d burst out the door at lunch time and after a few bites we’d fling our sandwiches out over the wall to Maggie Reilly’s expectant hens ducks and guinea hens. There were teams to be picked and football to be played.  

Anyway, on to the Ulster final. It was the summer of 1969. Bob Dylan was still singing The Times They Are a-Changin and they definitely were. The civil rights movement and the folk music movement were pretty close together at that time. They were wearing flowers in their hair in San Francisco and they had been marching in 1968 on the streets of Paris. In 1968 Down were also on the march and went the whole way and won the All Ireland final. In early summer of 1969 they were still the reigning All Ireland champions. 

And that’s what we loved in Cavan. We always had this thing about Down. Tom Lynch used to say, “The best day ever Down were, we could always beat them.” But when they were All Ireland champions, the wins over Down were the sweetest of all. In the sixties in Ulster, Cavan were still kings. We had an inner confidence, not an arrogance, but a ‘knowing” that we were simply the best. It’s the same kind of knowing you have when you ride a bicycle. You just get up and ride the bike. Nothing to do with arrogance. Just a certainty. An inner confidence.

Tom McCreesh the Armagh All Ireland full back lived in Cavan at the time and used train with us;  it just saved him miles of travelling to Armagh. No such thing as a secretive training session. I remember one night when we were training in Virginia he said to me  “Have you any idea what it’s like for other counties in Ulster to play against Cavan. When you are facing that Cavan team with their famous blue jerseys, and they burst out on to the pitch and they seem to be twice as big as they actually are. 

It’s our perception of them and their blue jerseys.” And of course perception is not reality, it’s much more than that.

But one thing was for sure. We, on the Cavan team, always had a powerful self-image. It took us all the way to that great day in Casement Park, Belfast when we were living the Cavan dream – running out on the pitch to play the then All Ireland champions, Down. We all knew the result beforehand. The game was just there to unfold and enjoy. That Cavan would win and win well was a given.

Muhammad Ali was the first person I remember to capture the importance of a powerful self-image. “I am the greatest.” I met him once and asked him where he got this “I am the greatest” craic . He told me that his grandmother got him to say these words over and over again, and “Some day” she said “maybe you’ll believe them, and others will believe them too.”

As the dawn follows the darkness, so were you were expected to win Ulster. The fact that Ulster contained the All Ireland champions was no excuse. That was the expectation. 

We normally trained in Breffni Park. Playing club football with Mountnugent against other clubs like Castlerahan, Crosserlough, Mullahoran or Cavan Gaels was always exciting but Breffni Park was our Mecca. Mountnugent now, like Ballinacree and most clubs has a state of the art pitch and dressing rooms. Back then, the field left a lot to be desired. The dressing rooms were the exact same at the dressing rooms in Castlerahan or Crosserlough or Mullahoran. The side of the ditch or the hedge. 

I remember my brother Norbert going up to UCD and having hot showers after cold games in November. It was quite a culture shock. At the club AGM the following January he suggested to the committee that we start raising funds for a dressing room and showers for the players. Knowing the financial condition of the club at the time the chairman ruled, “The only shower you’ll get gasson is a shower of rain out on that pitch.” … deireadh an scéil. In the wonderful summer of 1969 we trained in Breffni, one of the finest pitches in the country. It was flat. No hills. No swamps. No rushes. Our billiard table. And afterwards, we all had showers. 

Mick Higgins, the Cavan footballing legend was our manager and trainer. Tom Lynch has a Volkswagen Beetle car at the time and he would pick me up for training at home in Dungimmon. Training consisted of a few rounds of the pitch and some sprints. Plus a bit of running backways.  But the main training consisted of two not quite full teams playing the length of Breffni Park. The emphasis was on catching, kicking, foot passing and tackling. There was such a focus on “marking your man” that if Stephen Cluxton was playing against Cavan there was no way he’d manage a kick-out to a free man. Every man was “marked.” 

Stretching was something the cat did at home. Warming up and warming down never entered our heads. If you had an ache or a pain, the general advice was to “run it out of you.” There was a great sense of camaraderie among all the players. While we would have dug into each other in club games, we were all great friends on the county team.

Paddy Lyons was our goalkeeper. He made goalkeeping sexy long before Stephen Cluxton. He was very agile and had a great reach. In the old days the goalie caught the ball, charged out and ballooned it up the field with a little hop to finish it off. It could have gone anywhere. But Paddy was the new breed of goalies. He actually placed Cavan players with his kicks when he stopped a shot.

Gabriel Kelly was right full back. He had an incredible jump and his timing was immaculate. A great man marker, he relied on getting the ball first. Gabriel was always of the opinion that the best way to stop a forward was not to let him get the ball in the first place.

I’ll leave the rest of the list for another day.

We had a tough game against Derry in the semi-final. They really should have won that game in Clones, but they kicked an awful lot of wides. They simply didn’t have the belief that they could actually beat Cavan. I remember talking to players Tom Quinn and Malachy McAfee afterwards. They knew they’d let it slip. I told them there was no way that they would beat Down in an Ulster final, but that we would not only beat them but hammer them. They agreed. Belief is a powerful thing. Belief comes before performance. To achieve our potential we have to alter our beliefs.

Before the final, John Hynes asked me in Oldcastle how would we do. I told him that any money he’d put on Cavan was absolutely safe.  I met Des “Snitchy” Ferguson who advised: “Be patient. Watch for your chances and when they come take them.”

And so it unfolded. Cavan went to Casement Park and had that great victory over Down. Cavan 2 -13, Down 2 -6. It was what we expected and deep down it was what Down expected. I’m told that they had a saying in Down at the time, “If we can get over Cavan, we’ll win the All Ireland.”

Paddy Maguire had a taxi. He took Tom Lynch and me home from Belfast on that memorable day. We pulled up outside the Farnham Hotel on the main street. I opened the boot of the car to take out the bags with the boots and the togs. I lifted out the famous Anglo Celt Cup. Paddy said, “Leave it back in the boot and I’ll drop it up to Ray Carolan’s during the week.” 

The street was empty. Not a sinner out. After all, it was only the Ulster Final, and you were expected to win that. What did you expect? A welcome home? Crowds? They tell me it was different in 1997, but then this was 1969.  A man had walked on the moon.  But we had the Anglo Celt cup back home where it belonged. I sat into Tom’s Volkswagen Beetle and we headed up through Kilnaleck and Mountnugent, and on to Dungimmon. 

And it took Tom Hennessy to take me back to that Ballinacree schoolyard where it all began. Our training ground. Our centre of excellence. Our footballing nursery. Great times. Mighty people. Magical memories.