Meathman on a mission to revive Cavan's fortunes

Keith Duggan talks to a former Meath player who believes Cavan are still a major power and capable of winning an All-Ireland title

The day there are no complications in football is the day Mattie Kerrigan will become suspicious. On the eve of the football championship, Cavan's itinerary is full of problems that materialised from unexpected angles. Some are slow-burning and have been well advertised; Gerald Pierson and Jason Reilly have fought the good fight but seem certain not to play against Antrim tomorrow.

The forecast is for a wet day in Casement Park, not best suited to Cavan's sharp, light forwards. And locating the Derry/Tyrone game in Belfast means the pitch will be fairly well broken by the time Cavan trot out. You spend a season preparing but after the kitbags have been packed, the boots polished, after you have scribbled a few notes to deliver in the dressing-room the next afternoon, there are enough problems to keep you awake long into the night. It is the reason Kerrigan loves the game.

"We are well aware of the difficulties facing us here," he explains. "You know, you hear talk about Antrim being a Division Two team and all of that but the fact is they have regularly troubled teams that visit them in the championship. Derry have had some scrapes there in recent times. We are in a position now that means we probably won't be able to finalise a team until just before the game. That's not ideal. But at the same time we are going into this with a lot of belief in ourselves and in a good frame of mind."

Growing up in Meath gave Kerrigan the impression Cavan were one of the game's superpowers. His respect for the tradition of the game there never went away and the friends he has in the county enticed him to take on a post that had frustrated men like Liam Austin and Val Andrews.

The Ulster title success engineered by Martin McHugh in 1997 was a double-edged sword. That season raised the bar again and with that came an impatience for a return to the triumphs that the older generations regarded as a birthright. The response to the failure to win the 1930 Ulster title was to take ownership of the thing from 1931 to'37. They also ruled the province for the entirety of the Second World War.

The mystery is their famous back-to-back All-Ireland of 1947/48 yielded just one more perfect year, 1952. Kerrigan makes no bones about the ambition of the team being to win the All-Ireland title. Cavan people would not be so extrovert in their pronouncements but said in a soft Meath accent it just sounds like good reason.

"I think this is still a major football county and there is a sense of a time bomb waiting to go off. People crave success and 50 years has been a long time. The effort put into the game at all levels here remains huge and from that perspective, the future is bright."

The failure of the under-21 team to claim the Ulster title they have been close to for the past three years prompted the resignation of John Brady, who was disconsolate after a two-point loss to Tyrone. But his work at that level prompted Kerrigan to make liberal use of the younger players throughout an impressive league run. Cavan looked the most likely semi-finalists going into the last round but they stalled against a Sligo team desperate to avoid relegation and that same afternoon Fermanagh won against Mayo, squeezing out Cavan. Yet Cavan were generally solid and sometimes formidable. They posted the most eye-catching scoreline of the season in their 4-11 to 2-17 draw with Laois.

"We were reasonably pleased with the league although I am not one of those managers who says that making the semi-finals didn't matter," admits Kerrigan.

" We wanted to win every game and certainly we would have liked to qualify. But in general the competition allowed us to familiarise some good, young players with senior football. Some of that was through design but some of it was forced upon us through injury."

The relevance of the 1997 team has lessened dramatically over the past 12 months. The tyros of that year - Dermot McCabe, the Reilly boys and Mickey Graham - have naturally moved to the heart of the team. But the spirit of 1997 has long been disbanded. The emphasis and direction is on youth. The team has even changed notably from last season. Gone are corner backs Colm Hannon and Eamon Reilly, both of whom are tied up in final exams. James Doonan has been sidelined indefinitely with a groin injury and Michael Brides is out with complications originating in a leg break he suffered. Pierson and Reilly were central to the prolific bursts of scoring that were among the most notable features of Cavan's league form. Their absence is a blow.

Training Cavan involved a round trip of over 100 miles for Kerrigan.

"Football has been central to my life for as long as I can remember and I make no apologies about that," he says.

After his playing career with Meath in the 1960s and 1970s, Kerrigan threw himself into the under-age scene. Once on the merry-go-round, he forgot to step off. The game is something he deeply enjoys but current attitudes sometimes baffle him. Given he is in charge of a county with realistic ambitions, he knows more than most that preparation has become a science.

But he does not believe that preparations are a million miles away from what players of his own era encountered. Players left their houses twice a week then as well. Some of them abstained from the local pub in the lead up to big games. "The only difference was they didn't need a psychologist or a nutritionist to tell them to do it."

Sometimes Kerrigan worries that the point of the association is becoming lost on the very people who are its brightest lights. Part of the attraction was the chance encounter with someone with whom you only had the game in common. That was enough to cement friendships. The other part was it was an escape, a chance to exercise a given talent and to test yourself against the best.

"I would be no different than anybody else in that we have set out a serious and demanding objective for ourselves. But this is still a sport we are playing. And if it reaches the stage where people are no longer enjoying that part of it, there is something badly wrong."

Up north, PJ O'Hare and company are busy plotting ways to ensure the province's royal county will not enjoy their day in Casement Park. It has been a year for surprises, with Kerrigan's countyman Colm Coyle the architect behind the toppling of Armagh. Meathmen are taking over.

"I don't think that will ever happen, not without a hell of a fight. No, I mean it was a good win and I think if there was ever a day to turn Armagh, that was it. They will come back stronger. But it was just a perfect example of what happens in the Ulster championship. Counties like nothing better that having a tilt at the big guns."

And up top, the name of Cavan still carries the authority of a howitzer. Hours to go and Kerrigan has a million thoughts. Not that he would have it any other way.