Football's new order ignites folk memories

Sporting history is frequently created on the narrowest of margins and Cavan proved as much on Sunday. A one-point victory, which included a score awarded to Raymond Cunningham in the 13th minute when the ball was plainly wide, could hardly be narrower.

(In fairness to Derry, they made no reference to this after match.

It wouldn't really be a tenable argument given how early in the match the score was wrongly allowed, but narrowly beaten hot favourites aren't always known for stoicism.)

Of the many Cavan football stories, a personal favourite is the one related by the late Breandan O hEithir in his classic memoir Over

The Bar. It concerns Bill Doonan, right corner back on Cavan teams in the late 1940s.

Doonan was a settled traveller who trained as a radio operator with the Army. During the second World War, in search of adventure, he deserted and enlisted in the British army. In the autumn of 1943, during a lull in the war in Southern Italy, he went missing from his unit.

A search revealed him up a tree on the side of a steep hill, apparently in a trance. In the midst of war, Bill Doonan had found a vantage point where he could tune in his equipment in order to hear commentary on the second half of the All Ireland football final between Cavan and Roscommon.

Bill was on the losing side in that conflict, but happily he later sampled success both with his team in Southern Italy and also with his county in the All-Ireland finals of 1947 and 1948.

Cavan's escape from Ulster for the first time in three decades is a great lift for football in general. One of the reasons why hurling has recently been scoring heavily over football is that the type of

"breakthrough" counties emerging in both games have differed.

Football, it is sometimes forgotten as hurling dazzles us all, blazed the populist trail at the beginning of this decade. The

All-Irelands won by Donegal and Derry were the first two years for a century when the title went in successive years to first-time winners.

There is a difference between first-time winners and counties returning to the top after decades in the doldrums. The folk memory of success, however distant, creates a deep and abiding passion for the game which takes very little encouragement to be transformed into huge levels of public interest - and expectation.

Clare, to an extent, after years of coming close in Munster, conform to this type. Wexford are perfect examples of it. Offaly -

surprise winners in 1994 but a modern power in the game - aren't, and the difference was obvious in the less manic public response.

Football's new order has brought out more of that type of county.

Of the Ulster counties who broke through, none, with the possible exception of Down who had a modern (1960s) history of winning

All-Irelands, had the sort of tradition that burns like a slow fuse.

Of those teams from other provinces, neither Clare nor Leitrim -

memorable though their achievements were in 1992 and 1994 - fulfilled the criteria, and only Mayo last year and in 1989 have come close to doing so.

NOW, in the space of one weekend, that may be changing. Cavan's emergence restores one of the great names in football to the top table. The unfolding drama in Leinster holds out the prospect of

Kildare winning a first provincial title in 41 years and a first

All-Ireland since 1928 - a prospect which, with respect to the sensibilities of Meath and Offaly, we will dwell on.

Kerry are again Munster champions, and if it would be stretching a point to categorise them as a county where only a folk memory of success remains, it shouldn't be forgotten that by their standards, times are grim. They are currently experiencing the least successful phase in the history of Kerry football since the county's first

All-Ireland was won in 1903.

Mayo aren't new, but the county hasn't won the All-Ireland for 46

years and has contested only two finals, including last September's.

Like Kildare, they still haven't won their provincial title, but in their case that is regarded as a strong likelihood.

Already, the first All-Ireland semi-final has brought together, with impeccable timing, Cavan and Kerry on the 50th anniversary of the Polo Grounds final. Only a couple of months ago, it was regarded as a happy coincidence that the counties would both be in Division

One so that their commemorative match in New York this October could be designated a League fixture. Now they will meet as champions of their respective provinces and one of them as maybe more than that.

So much history, aside from 1947, has passed between all of the counties mentioned. In one eight-year period, to 1936, Kildare won their last All-Ireland, Cavan and Mayo their first and Kerry recorded their first four-in-a-row All-Ireland sequence.

In 1928, Kildare won the All-Ireland and with it a new trophy, named by his friends after a war of independence veteran and leading

London GAA member, Sam Maguire. To do so they beat Cavan, making an inaugural appearance in the final, in some controversy, as related in

Catch and Kick by Eoghan Corry.

"PD Mehigan (former GAA correspondent of this newspaper) produced one of the most damning lines in GAA history when he wrote: `Let it be written quickly: P Loughlin threw the ball into the Cavan net'."

Kerry's five-in-a-row quest ended in 1933 with an All-Ireland semi-final defeat by Cavan in Breffni Park. Cavan went on to win their first All Ireland by defeating Galway in what the local Anglo

Celt newspaper (after which the Ulster trophy is named, so it was actually "going home" last Sunday) described as "an event of international importance".

Even Meath come into the frame if we fast forward to 1952. They faced Cavan in what was, after a replay, the Ulster champions' last

All-Ireland victory. The final was remarkable for the fact that three brothers played in it, two for Cavan and one for Meath.

Liam, Des and Brendan Maguire were originally members of the legendary Cornafean club. According to George Cartwright's detailed history Up The Reds - The Cornafean Achievement, the family moved from Bingfield, their home in Cavan which was used by the county teams for collective training before All-Ireland matches, to

Oldcastle in Meath.

The brothers played in the 1952 final, after which one of them, having emigrated to the US, ran for the office of Sheriff of San

Mateo in California. He was elected, but was discovered afterwards to have been dead for two months.

Naturally, the brother possessed of such powers when dead and buried was Brendan, the one who played for Meath.