Seánie Johnston and Cavan Gaels now in bonus territory

Seánie Johnston, the final act. Have you the stomach for it? The patience for it? No hard feelings if you don’t. He worried long enough about what people made of him, about who they saw when they picked up a paper or went to a match. He tries, really tries, not to do that anymore. So if you want to keep turning the page, no worries. Go with his good graces.

He’s had a few phone calls from journalists this week. A month ago, he won his ninth Cavan county medal. He was man of the match in the final; he’d been man of the match in the semi-final too. So now the question naturally tumbles out – is he looking to get back into the Cavan panel for 2015?

Thing is, he doesn’t really know how to answer that one.

As in, he doesn’t know what’s the right answer for him to put out into the world. Say yes, and he’s in the papers turning the heat up on the county management, which he doesn’t want to do. Say no, and he’s in the papers turning his back on Cavan. Again. So he says he would never close the door on anything in life and leaves it at that.

One way or another, these are happier times. Back with Cavan Gaels since September of last year, he describes their latest county title win as the best one since the first one, away back in 2001. They started the final with seven players who’d never won a county medal – unheard of in a club that had owned the county championship right throughout the 2000s. They’re the future.

Wider world

Johnston, of course, was presumed to be the past. To the wider world, he left Cavan to play for Kildare. But actually, it was Cavan Gaels he left. The club that had nourished him, raised him, coached him, made him.

His final championship act in a Gaels jersey had been in October 2011, when a last-kick free from the sideline in Breffni Park drifted just wide and left Glenswilly to advance in the Ulster championship by a single point. By January, he was off trying to play at a higher level/trying to destroy the GAA (delete as appropriate).

“People say, ‘Jesus, he left his club.’ But they were never far from my thoughts. I was still ringing and texting them and I was still going to watch them play. I was still, of course, missing playing with them. I knew – or I hoped, because you never know what injuries might come along – but I hoped that at some stage I’d go back playing with Cavan Gaels.

“I think people misunderstand the situation. They maybe reckon that it would have been hard for people in the club to see me coming back. But I left on absolutely perfect terms with every player in the Cavan Gaels dressing room because I rang every single one of them before I made the decision to go.

“People that didn’t have a clue about the situation were saying was it going to be difficult to come back or that I wouldn’t be accepted, which was crazy. These lads are my mates, some of them are my best mates. I was talking to them every day even though I wasn’t with the club anymore. There was absolutely no issue. Coming back has been seamless.”

His transfer went through in the second week of September 2013. By the third, he was lining out against Mullahoran in the county quarter-final. With their first attack, a Gaels attempt at a point dropped down off the post and into his hands. First touch in two years and the umpire was reaching for green.

“Talk about a stroke of luck! Whatever problems there might have been, a goal against Mullahoran will always forgive a lot.”

Endless abuse

There has been endless abuse from the sidelines, of course. Every wide is jeered, every error and misstep given the bird.

Every so often, friends come back to him with tales of another row he got them into after they stick up for him in the face of relentless cawing from the stands. He’s touched by it but he wishes they wouldn’t bother.

For a while, his form didn’t help the situation. He came back from Kildare with a hamstring that took a while to right itself and has missed a huge portion of this year with an injured ankle. As his body messed him around, so his mind fizzed and frothed.

“It’s confidence. I was getting down on myself, I was doubting myself. And it’s amazing – when you’re not that overly confident, the little bits and pieces that can or can’t go your way don’t happen for you. The shot just slips by the post or hits it instead of going over.

“You lose confidence then. You can start thinking, ‘If I make this run for this ball and I get it, everything I do with it is going to be pictured and talked about and people will be saying he did this with it or he did that with it.’ Whereas if I stay out of the way a little bit, it will be a case of, ‘Well, they didn’t get any good ball into him’. But that’s no way to be.”

Off the pitch, it was just as bad sometimes. The Kildare folly was the great unmentionable, even though he’d have loved nothing better than for someone to come up and tell him he was wrong so he could have it out with them. But nobody did. Instead he’d hear back that so-and-so was giving out about him to such-and-such. Valley of the squinting windows stuff.

“You get paranoid. You walk into a shop or something and you see someone turn their head and straight away you’re thinking, ‘Were they talking about me?’ And those people would have had 101 things in their head that had nothing whatsoever to do with me and all I was thinking was, ‘That fella is definitely saying something about me.’

Dark times

“Like, I know that sounds stupid and I don’t want to sound cocky or anything but that’s how I was feeling at the time. It’s really not a healthy way to be. It’s not a good position to be in mentally. It was difficult, definitely. There’s no point in me trying to bravado my way out of it. But I’m trying to get around to the fact that I can’t do anything about it so why let it worry me.

“You get used to it. In the dark times, you’re sitting there thinking, ‘What’s the point in feeling like this? Go and do something positive.’ So gradually you move away from having negative thoughts about the whole thing. You take a positive approach to things. You make sure that you walk into places with your head up. You haven’t killed anybody. You haven’t done anything crazy.

“I can’t worry about what people think. I did for a long time and eventually I came to the conclusion that you can’t control what people are thinking or saying.”

Time ticks on. His first game back after the ankle injury was the county semi-final and he put in a vintage display, scoring 1-8 against Cuchullains. Another 0-6 tally followed in the final.

The Gaels never made much of an impression in Ulster back in the day but they face Slaughtneil tomorrow and with the big beasts of Ulster falling at every turn, the way is clear for a new name in the cup. All the same, Johnston isn’t exactly bullish.

Ultimate goal

“It was very important that the young lads on our squad won a county title. These boys are the fulcrum of the team now, a lot of them were in the panel since they were 18 and now they’re 21, 22 and they have a county medal. That’s what the ultimate goal for the year was so from here on out, we’re in bonus territory.”

Spoken like a man who’s getting used to being there himself.