Coleman shades it on the symbols issue

SIDE LINE CUT: After many days of intense deliberation on Eamonn Coleman's sunglasses, the verdict is that, on the whole, we are in favour writes Keith Duggan.

In case you missed them, the Cavan boss wore the bronze-tinted eye protectors for his team's drawn match against Down in Casement Park, and again for the rollicking, triumphant homecoming of a replay in Breffni Park.

Anyone who has seen Eamonn Coleman walk the sideline will be able to vouch that he cuts an authoritative figure at the best of times. Napoleonic, you could say - although you would probably be as well not to around his home place of Magherafelt.

Since he burst on to the national scene as the twinkle-eyed leader of Derry men in 1993, Coleman has been box office. When he goes to a place, things happen.

And for some reason on Sunday, the shades made him look like a genuine star. They were cool without being in any way trendy: in fact, there was something of Aristotle Onassis about the shape and peculiarly Seventies tint of washed-out brown - the colour, say, of Julie Christie's hair. It would not have taken a terrific leap of imagination to transplant Eamonn from the heat and baying crowds of Breffni Park to a gleaming yacht in the Mediterranean, on Old Spice waters and Kid Creole playing on the hi-fi. While everybody in Cavan got hot and bothered, Eamonn stayed as cool and fresh as the Man from Del Monte.

Of course, he was not wearing the shades to make a sartorial statement. I am sure he simply realised it was a sunny day and hauled them out of the glove compartment, all the better to distinguish the various Reillys scampering around the park.

But intentional or not, the sunglasses gave the manager a certain aura. To put it bluntly, I don't think there was any way a team with a manager who looked so effortlessly suave could have lost the football game. And while Coleman's second-half substitutions and his famous sang-froid undoubtedly contributed to the finest day Cavan football has known since 1997, it can be argued that the shades were the key.

Because we are reaching the delicious stage of championship meltdown when people study every detail, no matter how inconsequential, to see where and how counties get an edge on one another.

Perhaps it is a blessing that GAA managers do not really go in for daring fashion statements. True, Ger Loughnane occasionally turned up for massively important Clare games wearing tracksuits not seen since the days when Mr Motivator started the morning fitness craze.

And we have fond memories of when Brian Mullins, in his term as Derry manager, appeared on another blissfully sunny day, in shorts and a floppy hat à la Happy Mondays. As a friend noted, it was for that moment rather than any fashion parade by Alexander McQueen that the phrase Heroin Chic should have been coined.

And there was something almost flaunting about the shorts John Maughan wore during his famous campaign with the Clare footballers in 1992 - another campaign that, if memory serves, was bathed in sunshine. It was certainly a radical break with tradition that the manager should have better gams than the players on the field.

But beyond those milestones, the famous old Bainisteoir's bib, nondescript navy tracksuit bottoms and gnarled football boots will be the items chosen by future museum curators to represent the average Gaelic manager circa AD 2000.

Most sports have had their share of fashion slaves on the sidelines. The legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight has worn a red sweater to all his games for the past 30 years.

But by and large, GAA managers have, perhaps wisely, avoided such trademarks.

Though Eamonn Coleman is unlikely to continue to wear his shades throughout the summer, he may well have provoked something of a rage in Cavan. The likeable Derry man was a cult figure in Cavan even before last Sunday. The win against Down reawakened football passions in a county that likes nothing better than to be roused.

Do not be surprised if, next time you pass through Swanlinbar or Killeshandra, you see dozens or even hundreds of Cavan men sporting sunglasses with lenses generous enough to receive Russian satellite television.

Of course, this is the time of championship that compels you to start checking your own lenses. The championship distorts your view of things. For instance, as a treat this column was taken along to see Troy the other evening in a state of excitement and trepidation. Yes, it was high time that the feats and exploits of the famous Offaly maestro were given the kind of quality cinematic treatment they deserved.

But while we did not doubt the abilities of the leading man, Brad Pitt, to master some of John's silken touch with the hurl, or to suck on a Player's Blue in convincing fashion, we could not imagine him realising the soft and fine Lusmagh accent.

As it turned out, the film had nothing to do with the celebrated forward and the disappointment of the evening was confirmed when the word was broken that The Fog of War was not a one-man tour de force by Mike McNamara but something else entirely.

Give the movies a wide berth until the championship is over is the advice from this quarter.

We have reached the point where you can see the championship in everything and where every managerial gesture and word is analysed like a card played in a high-stakes poker game. Rationale goes out the window. Tactics and substitutions are one thing, but symbols and codes are another. Two years ago, the wristbands worn by Armagh caused a minor sensation and a bit of controversy, but they worked.

I was hundreds of miles away from Thurles when Waterford overcame Clare in the Munster hurling championship, but I still felt a shiver of apprehension when I heard it told that Justin McCarthy had moved through the crowd chanting "Oh ye of little faith" like a Rasputin of his time. As a moment of theatre and journalistic comeuppance, it will hardly be topped this summer - unless Justin delivers his next Biblical soundbite wearing Raybans.

But of course he is completely right. It is impossible, at this delicate stage, to have complete faith in anything concerning the championship. The championship is reliable only in that it will deceive you sooner or later. It is a world too fickle and loaded with portent to be judged solely along the lines of reason or form or probability. As a result, we look for signs, no matter how small or silly.

Sometimes you hear and see things and they just fit. They seem right. So mock if you will, but if Eamonn Coleman brings his Cavan team to your county some Sunday this summer and is wearing sunglasses he might have borrowed from either Starsky or Hutch, your team is probably going down.