Cavan end wilderness years

History rhymed and Cavan became the Ulster football champions for the first time since 1969, crowned on a day which book-ended 28 turbulent years. On this extraordinary afternoon a match report would be superfluous if noise could be translated to newsprint. To hear the monstrously happy din kicked up by the people of Cavan late yesterday afternoon as they danced on dusty Clones turf was to understand the relief that attends the end of famine.

To hear the thousands sing and holler and hoot was to know the great visceral joy which football can bring.

Yesterday afternoon was heroism followed by delirium. What remains on the morning after is the forensics, the nitty gritty dissection of the best Ulster final in many years.

This was one of the high watermarks of a splendid football summer, a game which bubbled and boiled, a match which gripped its audience right down to the last kick and its hysterical aftermath.

Derry came to Clones as favourites, but not at prohibitive odds. Realistic forecasters pondered whether Derry or Cavan had beaten the weaker opposition on the road to the Ulster final and worked backwards from there.

The more canny among them factored in the footballing acuity of Martin McHugh, the diminutive Donegal man who orchestrated yesterday's tactical triumph.

On an afternoon of extraordinary bravery and fine, flowing football it is only right to record that McHugh's managerial scheming may have made the critical difference. Derry have never liked playing teams who run at them and this is precisely what Cavan did relentlessly yesterday, pulling the Derry defence hither and tither until they were dizzy.

The disciplined Cavan half-forward line ran at Derry again and again and when they needed an option, they slipped the pass through into the space in which Larry Reilly was invariably outsprinting his marker.

Just as important however was McHugh's decision to play wing back Gerry Sheridan in the corner as a man-marker on Joe Brolly. This was the first afternoon this summer when Joe didn't get to blow kisses to the crowd after a goal. Indeed, he went to the 30th minute without seeing the ball and scored just one point from play, his lowest total this year.

To aggravate Derry's problems they seemed mysteriously reluctant to play the quick ball into Seamus Downey at full-forward, preferring to toil laboriously in the middle third of the field before facing into the swarming Cavan defence.

With Cavan rampant all over the middle of the pitch and defending ferociously from the instant they lost possession, Derry's reluctance to hit early balls into space was mystifying.

For all that Derry spent the afternoon breathing down Cavan's neck and on the few occasions when they truly appeared to get motoring, they looked as if they could steal the game from Cavan.

They got their noses in front with 12 minutes remaining when Kieran McKeever burst through to finish a superb move with a point. Two minutes later Cavan scored the game's only goal and effectively wrapped up victory.

That victory was founded on guts and intelligence. They don't have any footballers enjoying the (fading) celebrity of Derry's best but Cavan have a will which is extraordinary and an admirable inventiveness.

They could have let their afternoon unravel in adversity yesterday when Stephen King suffered a thigh strain within the first minutes and was reduced to cruising speed for the rest of the day.

They made the best of it however, refused to be panicked into using one of their subs, and improvised by sending King into the full-forward line for a work exchange with the well-travelled Damien O'Reilly. They sat back then and enjoyed the fruits of Dermot McCabe's gargantuan contribution at midfield.

McCabe was Cavan's man of the match yesterday, overshadowing Tohill in terms both of performance and contribution to the cause.

It was somehow fitting when Tohill lobbed a 45 into the Cavan square in the final 10 minutes, that it was McCabe who plucked it from the clouds and came storming out with it, stirring up the terraces once again.

By then the game had already provided enough excitement and excellence to be tagged a classic. Through a nip-and-tuck first half neither side had ever managed to get more than two points clear of the other.

The sides got to half-time with nothing between them, yet Cavan looked more comfortable. Larry Reilly had given Johnny McBride such problems early on that Derry were forced to move the more physical Kieran McKeever onto him before serious damage was done.

On several occasions Reilly and an assortment of direct-running half-forwards threatened to burst through into the Derry square. No goals were conceded but Cavan always looked the likeliest to ruffle the net.

Importantly for Cavan the first three scores of the second half were theirs. Fintan Cahill who had a quiet game took the first before Ronan Carolan who is approaching his old form tagged on a couple more to rattle Derry.

Derry's wing backs Gary Coleman and Sean Martin Lockhart were spending an inordinate amount of time in the Cavan half of the field, overlapping their forwards on runs. This paid some dividends in terms of a couple of Coleman points but in hindsight Derry might have settled for a little more conservatism and a little less exposure of their fullbacks.

Coleman scored the middle point of three in Derry's comeback during an 11-minute spell when Cavan failed to register a score. Derry's physical superiority looked at this stage as if it might be crucial, yet McHugh finally withdrew the heroic Stephen King and added Jason Reilly to the attack to relieve the pressure.

Cavan's ball-carrying was still paying dividends. Peter Reilly restored their lead 17 minutes into the half with a free. Then Ray Cunningham ran straight into the heart of Derry territory before releasing Ronan Carolan for a fine point.

The manner in which individual fortunes were ebbing and flowing was best illustrated by the following five-minute spell which commenced with Anthony Tohill hitting a 45 badly wide, a miss which seemed to severely deflate his colleagues. Johnny McBride mustered spirits with a point and then Tohill made a huge catch, battered through a few tackles and scored a wondrous point to level the game and seemingly light the touchpaper for Derry. Kieran McKeever took the cue and underlined a wonderful move with a point for Derry to lead with 12 minutes remaining.

McHugh's substitutions were about to pay off however. Philip Smith won a loose ball in midfield and hoofed a long ball to Damian O'Reilly (restored to the front after Smith's introduction). O'Reilly won possession clean over Johnny McBride's head and passed to Jason Reilly who scudded the ball low to the net.

His was Cavan's last score of the game.

Joe Brolly added a free from the hands for Derry in the last minute and a few minutes prior to that Paul O'Dowd made a wonderful save from Gary McGill. Anthony Tohill's resultant 50 was caught and cleared by Dermot McCabe.

Cavan roll on to an All-Ireland semi-final against Kerry, 50 years after those counties met in the historic polo grounds final in New York.