Modest reunion redolent with tradition

All-Ireland football qualifier, round three Meath v Cavan With Clones as context, Keith Duggan talks to two survivors of the great Meath-Cavan rivalries of the 1940s and 1950s

Meath and Cavan are prime examples of the way in which accepted GAA rivalries can simply disappear into the ether.

The teams last met in the championship in the 1954 All-Ireland semi-final, by which time the county supporters were probably sick of one another. It must have been inconceivable then that a half-century would pass before the championship would have their fates cross once again, which is why their meeting in Clones tomorrow has the air of a wartime reunion.

"The rivalry was always there, even before the counties played All-Irelands against each other," remembers Tony Tighe, the dashing winger from the classic 1940s Cavan team.

"I came from Ballyjamesduff and many of us used to cycle over to Oldcastle to the picture house of an evening. We might have a few bottles of stout afterwards. But you would be a wee bit nervous leaving Oldcastle on your bike on the week of a big championship. You would keep the fact that you were playing for Cavan to yourself."

When Meath and Cavan met in the 1949 All-Ireland final, the Ulster team were at the height of their pomp and strongly fancied to complete the three-in-row. They had travelled in every sense. The celebrated Cavan-Kerry final in New York's Polo Grounds two years earlier began with a sailing on the Mauritania in Cobh on September 2nd and ended with a parade in Cavan town on a roof-racked bus escorted by 15 bands in the early hours of October 6th.

And that month-long adventure was preceded by the cloistered weeks of "collective training", when the Cavan team would head off somewhere obscure and train intensively. Tighe remembers an Old IRA man putting the team through drills he was taught in more turbulent decades. The cost of these excursions was met by church-gate collections and players were recompensed for loss of earnings. It was a source of some annoyance to younger players like Tighe that students, who would have been able to earn seven or eight pounds a week through part-time work, were deemed ineligible for this scheme.

In Meath, where collective training was also the practice, the team sequestered in the Brú Na Midhe hostel in the Gibbstown Gaeltacht. As the great Meath GAA man Peter McDermott recalls, the team trainer, Fr Paddy Tully, did not subscribe to a particularly physical regimen and there was an underlying sense that the main purpose of the retreats was to keep his players "out of mischief and away from bad company".

Meath's presence in that 1949 showdown was something of a surprise. As McDermott remembers, they were ordinary in Leinster - a campaign shaped by the wonderful three-match odyssey against Louth. Paddy Meegan managed an equaliser to keep Meath alive in the first match and Paddy Connell boomed a point to win the thing after an enthralling third game on a score line of 2-5 to 1-7.

It captured the imagination, but if Cavan didn't exactly swagger into town for the final, they were hot favourites.

"We were perhaps a little laid back," Tighe agrees. "Meath had recalled Jim Kearney at midfield and we felt that we would hold an advantage around there - wrongly as it turns out. They beat us well, it was a setback."

Some 79,000 watched Meath's first All-Ireland win. The score was 1-10 to 1-6. Clonee was the first stop for the All-Ireland champions. Tighe remembers that when Cavan were heading back with the Sam Maguire in 1948 after beating Mayo, they stopped in a pub in Navan. The owner gladly served them but nervously asked them not to stop too long as he didn't want to anger local patrons with the sight of Cavan men celebrating in the heart of the Royal County. Now, there was no need to secrete the cup through the town.

The counties met again in the 1952 All-Ireland. By then, Cavan football had undergone a profound change through the sad, sudden death of their indomitable wing back PJ Duke. The Stradone man was only 25 and that Meath defeat was his last All-Ireland final. Tighe had travelled with Duke the previous Sunday to referee a game in Ballybofey. After it, his team-mate complained of tiredness and sore legs. Within a week he was in the Mater and to the disbelief of all of Cavan, he passed away from some kind of virus on May 1st, 1950.

McDermott places himself in a kitchen in Trim listening to the 1.30pm news when he heard. He had stopped in a friend's house for dinner and was dumbstruck. Although he did not know Duke well, he came to cherish a photograph of that 1949 final, the pair of them in combat for the ball.

When John Joe O'Reilly, the captain of the immortal 1947 side, also died young, from a kidney disorder in November of 1952, something of the excitement of football left Cavan and, coincidentally or not, they have not appeared in an All-Ireland final since.

"It was hard for us to fathom how men we had played with could be gone so suddenly," said Tighe. "And I suppose it was hard not to associate it with playing to some extent. I stopped in 1953. I had three All-Irelands then and I might have continued but I was advised I might have some problems afterwards and there didn't seem much point. But it had an awful effect losing those men. It ran deeper than football and cast a gloom on the county."

O'Reilly had retired by the time Meath and Cavan stood alone for that 1952 showdown. The first game ended in a draw and is remembered chiefly for the deluge that took command of the day. Tighe woke up in Barry's hotel and heard the rain before he saw it. The minor game was postponed, the senior played in miserable conditions.

Cavan took the replay 0-9 to 0-5. Three Maguire brothers played in that series: Des and Liam for Cavan, Brendan for Meath. By 1954, when McDermott captained Meath to their next All-Ireland victory, Brendan had migrated to California, where he became a sheriff, wearing the silver star where an All-Ireland medal might have been.

After the 1952 Cavan team went into decline, the good times simply stopped. Meath continued to enjoy some success through the 1960s. McDermott took over along with Brian Smyth and Frankie Byrne from Fr Tully - a figure as revered then as Seán Boylan is now - and won the 1967 All-Ireland final with a team celebrated for the fact that 15 clubs were represented in the starting line-up. Twenty years would pass before they won again. By then, Cavan were strangers to Croke Park.

"I think Cavan's decline was attributable to the rise in standards across Ulster rather than anything they started to do wrong," says McDermott. "All these other counties began to push and push and it just became harder and harder to get out of Ulster."

A reunion was organised for the remaining members of that 1952 final some years ago. As Tighe noted, "it used to be that fellas would stop you on the street to ask how the football was going. Then it became the question of, 'how many of that team is left anyhow?'"

Tighe, a resident of Clones, will be in the crowd on Sunday. The coming together of those old colours is bound to be evocative. McDermott, now well into his 80s, is still sharp as a razor but an eye condition has robbed him of the pleasure of attending matches. He tries to keep in touch with most of his football contemporaries, including Cavan's Jim McCabe, his direct marker all those championships ago.

A lunchtime qualifying game is not the most extravagant of settings for what is a significant resumption of summer rivalry between two mid-century giants of the game. Cavan's topsy-turvy season has begun to excite the local crowd and Meath convey the impression of a side beginning to thrive in the role of outsiders. They are reunited at an uncertain time in their history but because they are neighbours they cannot be strangers. It will be hard and tough, as tradition dictates.

Meath, All-Ireland champions 1949: Kevin Smyth; Mick O'Brien, Paddy O'Brien, Kevin McConnell; Séamus Heery, Paddy Dixon, ChristoHand; Paddy Connell, Jim Kearney; Frankie Byrne, Brian Smyth (capt), Matty McDonnell; Paddy Meegan, Bill Halpenny, Peter McDermott. Sub: Pat Carolan for Frankie Byrne.

Cavan, All-Ireland champions 1952: Séamus Morris: Jim McCabe, Phil Brady, Des Maguire; Paddy Carolan, Liam Maguire, Brian O'Reilly; Victor Sherlock, Tom Hardy; Séamus Hetherton, Mick Higgins (capt), Edwin Carolan; JJ Cassidy, Tony Tighe, Johnny Cusack. Sub: P Fitzsimons for JJ Cassidy.