In Focus: The man who scored the point that wasn’t

AS soon as the ball left his boot, Raymond Cunningham knew it was heading the wrong side of the posts, but fortunately for Cavan fans an umpire – who perhaps got his angles a little confused – thought otherwise.

It was Ulster final day on July 20, 1997 and Cunningham’s point-that-wasn’t made the decisive difference on the scoreboard as Cavan ended 28 long years in the wilderness on a scoreline of 1-14 to 0-16.

Perhaps something that has been lost in the mists of time (23 years ain’t no joke as any Cavan fan will attest) is that the controversial score occurred in the 13th minute, and Cunningham insists that a well-drilled Breffni side would’ve gone on to win the game anyway.

That isn’t mere bravado on his part: Derry were not the team of ‘93, they had a host of All-Ireland winners in their ranks, most of whom underperformed on the side.

Anthony Tohill was overshadowed in the middle of the park by Dermot McCabe, while Martin McHugh’s decision to play wing back Gerry Sheridan in the corner, as a man-marker on an in-form Joe Brolly, was vindicated as the Dungiven man only managed a point from play when we had been hitherto been scoring goals right, left and centre in that year’s championship.

Clones was a blur of blue and white after the match as their overjoyed fans bounded onto the pitch, but Raymond Cunningham admits harbouring major regrets that they didn’t follow it up with success at national level, losing that year’s All-Ireland semi-final to Kerry.

But anyway, while Cunningham is most readily identified with that score against Derry, there’s actually a lot more meat to his story.

He’s actually grew up in Kilmainhamwood in north Meath, but it was his love of handball that led him a few short miles up the road to Cavan club Kingscourt, where he now lives with his wife and kids.

He played handball in Kingscourt as a youngster and won All-Ireland medals right up to U21 level, but when it came to the crunch, he decided that football would take priority.

“I lived in Kilmainhamwood which is maybe four miles from Kingscourt, and about a dozen kids from my village went to Kingscourt to play handball, and I didn’t stop. A few of the other lads drifted away and I was playing handball at county level for years before playing football for Cavan.”

Cunningham’s mother is originally from Bailieborough while his dad’s from Wicklow, but he still grew up idolising some totemic figures from the Royal County.

“I followed Meath until I was 17 or 18 really. It was the team that won All-Irelands in the late 80s. I always admired the likes of Brian Stafford, but I never played football for Meath at any level.”

While switching club or county is almost anathema in the GAA, Cunningham says he was rarely criticised for donning the Cavan jersey.

There are two primary reasons for that – he was already associated with Cavan by the time Martin McHugh came knocking in the mid-90s, while the relevant figures in Meath had never shown much of an interest in him.

“That sorta stuff has never really had an effect on me. I was never invited into a Meath set-up – I was invited into a Cavan set-up. If I’d got the call from Meath I’d have obviously considered it but I’d have had to stop playing handball for Cavan and I didn’t really want to do that.”

Martin McHugh stepped into the breach in late 1994, but he inherited a team that was mid-table in Division Three and hadn’t won an Ulster Championship match since 1987.

Cunningham was nonetheless delighted when he was drafted into the panel in early 1995 after inspiring Kilmainhamwood to the Meath u-21 Championship title.

His eligibility was actually called into question by his native county and he was forced to miss out on Cavan’s Ulster u-21 Championship final defeat to Donegal, but Croke Park gave him the greenlight to play for the Breffni County after his mother presented an affidavit that he was born in Cavan and away he went.

“I was actually surprised to be asked in. I was 21 or 22 and didn’t think I was at that level. Martin was a great coach. He was phenomenal to be honest with you and he got Cavan playing as a unit which hadn’t been the case for some time. He was just great with the players and got the best out of all of us.”

McHugh made an immediate impact as they reached the Ulster final in 1995 where they were defeated by a Peter Canavan-inspired Tyrone.

Cunningham recalls that it took him a year or two to establish himself as a starter, however.

“In the first year I got on for some league games and had a few minutes in the championship. In 1996 I got injured and dropped out of the panel, but I won the Meath Championship with the club and came back into the Cavan panel.”

The sleeping beast of Ulster football had been awoken and Cunningham played a full part in what turned out to be an unforgettable 1997.

“I played well in the league and kept my position in the championship. That’s the way it worked under Martin. If you got into the team, you stayed there unless you were playing poorly. I was lucky because I was playing well with the club and that gave him a good opportunity to see me play, and I was going well at the time. I was injury-free which really helped as well.”

All the pieces seemed to fall in place for Cavan in 1997. McHugh and his selectors were in their third year and they had a settled team. 34-year-old Stephen McKing, Bernard Morrison, Fintan Cahill and an injury-free Damian O’Reilly had bucketloads of experience, Philip Smith was enjoying a resurgence, and they had match winners like Jason Reilly, Ronan Carolan, Dermot McCabe, Mickey Graham, Anthony Forde, and – hey! – Cunningham himself.

They weren’t too hot in their first-round match against Fermanagh with a point from Forde five minutes into injury time saving Cavan from an embarrassing defeat, and they weren’t much better in the replay as they snatched a 0-14 to 0-11 victory.

They improved immensely in the semi-final against Donegal, however, recording a 2-15 to 1-10 victory with Ronan Carolan leading the opposition rearguard a merry dance and Stephen King outstanding in the middle.

Derry, who had won the All-Ireland final four years previously, were still favourites to win the Ulster title after thrashing Tyrone in a one-sided semi-final, but Joe Brolly was worried about the game. Here’s what he said in a pre-match interview:

“At the present time I think Cavan are better than Tyrone. They are very fit and are not choking the same way they did two or three years ago in big matches.

“Martin McHugh has them very well-drilled and they are super fit. They are a football-mad county and you just don’t know what is going to happen from game to game.”

Cavan were on the brink of their first Ulster title in nearly three decades and Cunningham says it didn’t happen by accident.

“We thought we had a decent chance but we nearly lost to Fermanagh in the first-round. They were a decent team but we probably took them for granted. We were a bit better in the replay and then improved again. I actually thought the final against Derry was one of the best Ulster Championship matches in memory.

“The Cavan players weren’t as renowned as the Derry players but there were a lot of good footballers – quality, quality players like Fintan Cahill and Ronan Carolan. There were a lot of young players at the time coming through like Larry and Peter Reilly and Dermot McCabe. It wasn’t just a fluke, it happened over a two or three-year period.”

On these pages is a cut out of the match programme from that day showing the Cavan line-up. Cunningham was one of the smaller fellas on the team, and he says his listing of 12 stone was an exaggeration.

“In fairness I am 5’9” but I was probably around 11 stone. Martin McHugh always said ‘add a few inches and a stone.

“Most lads were a stone or half a stone lighter than the profiles say. Any guy who was on the light side would take any advantage they could. I definitely wasn’t 12 stone.”

With that in mind, it’s worth noting that Cunningham did remarkably well to avoid being shunted over the sideline by a Derry defender in his lung-bursting run that climaxed in that controversial point.

“In fairness my game was all about running and taking on players, that was my game and I was pretty confident when I got the ball that I could get past a player.

“Those were the attributes that I brought to the team, I worked hard and I wasn’t a big scorer, I only scored a point or two on any given day whereas with my club I was more of a scoring forward. I was happy to play any role really. I’d have given corner-back a go if it was required of me.”

From the angle on television, it was fairly obvious that his effort had gone wide, and he knew that himself. He thought little more of it until the incident was placed under the microscope on the Sunday Game later that night, and he says it’s to the Derry players’ eternal credit that they didn’t kick up a fuss about it.

“To be honest, I knew as soon as I’d kicked it that it was wide. I was giving out to myself after I kicked it as it was one I’d normally have nailed, but Ronan Carolan said ‘why are you giving out, it’s a point.’

“I didn’t pass any remarks really, you forget about these things then everyone started talking about the point that wasn’t.

“To be honest not one Derry player said anything about it. It was only later that night that the Sunday Game analysed the backside out of it.

“If it happened in the last ten or 15 minutes maybe there’d been a replay but it was very early on and these things happen in football.

“To be honest on the day I thought we were the better team, and I think even if that point hadn’t been given, we would’ve found a point from somewhere else.”

In a sense, it wasn’t the game’s defining score anyway. Derry led 0-15 to 0-14 in the final ten minutes, but substitute Jason Reilly fired low to the net and the Oak Leafers couldn’t find a way back.

There was pandemonium after the match and Cunningham remembers that Cavan town was thronged with people when they brought back the Anglo Celt later that evening.

“It was amazing, the amount of supporters on the pitch and then trying to get home to Cavan. We had to stop two or three miles outside the town as there were that many people there.

“There was something like 15 or 20,000 people in the town square and it was a brilliant few days. I probably didn’t completely appreciate it at the time.”

A similar number (probably more given 60,000 people were packed into Headquarters) travelled to Croke Park in support of their new heroes for an All-Ireland semi-final against Paidi O Se’s Kerry.

The Kingdom hadn’t won an All-Ireland for 11 years, and they looked ordinary enough in their Munster final win over Clare, but Maurice Fitzgerald was having the season of his life and they had a number of young stars who would end their careers with a bagful of Celtic Crosses.

Hopes were high that Cavan could reach their first All-Ireland final since 1952, but tactical errors, defensive errors and missed goal chances were major contributing factors in a 1-17 to 1-10 defeat. Kerry then won a fairly average All-Ireland final against Mayo (not something you could say about Maurice Fitzgerald’s own contribution to that win, obviously), and Cunningham admits it’s a lasting regret that Cavan didn’t finish the year with Sam Maguire in the locker.

“I don’t think we were overawed really, most of us hadn’t Croke Park experience but the same applied to the Kerry team.

“I think we made a lot of stupid mistakes on the day, and they probably had more top, top players than we did – Maurice Fitzgerald, Darragh O’Se and Dara O’Cinneade.

“They were a young and eager team and probably got the run of the ball on the day.

“It’d be my major regret. I’m not saying we deserved to beat them but we were every bit as good as them. I won’t say we deserved to win but if we played to our potential we could have.

“Unfortunately opportunities like that don’t come around very often, and it gets harder and harder as the top teams like Dublin, Mayo, and Tyrone are so professional, after that it’s much of a muchness in my opinion.”

He continued: “I watched the final and expected Kerry to win, and they won it relatively easily. To be honest that’s why it was so disappointing, we could’ve won the All-Ireland. That’s the regrets you have but there’s very little you can do about it so you have to set it to one side.”

In the wake of that defeat, a reporter with the Cavan weekly the Anglo Celt said that: “Martin’s three-year spell is up and, it is to be hoped, that he will extend his stint for a further three-year period.

“He must of course get the full support of the clubs and his fellow backroom team. All being well then, one expects to see the Blues retain Division One status, find a few replacements and then to return to Croke Park fresh and invigorated to take on, and surmount, the best. And all the better if that includes Kerry!”

Unfortunately, that didn’t come to pass. Martin McHugh stepped down and that was really the end of that Cavan team, and Cunningham decided his intercounty days were over even though in 2000 he was only in his mid-20s.

“In fairness he was travelling from Donegal for the guts of three years and he had small kids who are obviously superb footballers, it’s amazing they’ve turned out to be the real deal as well.

“It was a huge commitment for him. During the summer we were meeting up about five times a week.

“It was a pity and I’d have loved him to stay on, but as always happens a few of the older lads retired when he left, and when new managers come in they do things differently and it’s not the same.

“I bowed a few years later myself, my wife and I started a family and it’s almost impossible to play county football when you have small kids.”

McHugh’s immediate successor was Down’s Liam Austin, but he was – and there’s no point sugarcoating it – ousted by the players after a year in charge. The players passed a vote of no confidence in the management as they felt the training wasn’t up to scratch, but Cunningham says he missed much of the drama as he was away getting married.

“I was getting married around Christmas time and when I came back into the panel, there was a new manager, Val Andrews.

“I mightn’t be the right man to ask but there was a parting of ways anyway. Certain players didn’t get on with Liam. He was only there for a year. What tends to happen is that when you change manager a few times the fluency of the team is broken and we weren’t as good after Martin left.”

While Cunningham regrets that they didn’t go on to win the All-Ireland, he knows that he’s also privileged to have been part of that Ulster Championship-winning team. Plenty of Cavan greats – Ollie Leddy, Derek McDonnell, Sean Leddy, Cian Mackey, Martin Reilly and so on and so forth – haven’t been so fortunate.

“I remember at the time thinking there’s no chance it’ll be so long again before winning Ulster and it’s 23 years now which is unbelievable.

“There’s so many good Cavan players since then who haven’t won an Ulster final so I feel lucky I was there when we had success.

“The same happened in the seventies and eighties, Cavan had good teams but they didn’t get across the line in Ulster either.

“I mean look at Stephen King, he was a huge servant to Cavan football and played for 15 or 16 years. To finally win that Ulster medal was huge for him, if you ask him if he’d have any regrets from 1997 he’d probably say no.”

Cunningham joined Kingscourt Stars in 1999 and played for two seasons before rejoining his native Kilmainhamwood. He hung up the boots for good in 2007 after suffering an ACL injury. He has no regrets about quitting with Cavan at a relatively young age and has endless admiration for the top intercounty players in the country at the moment.

“It’s getting harder and harder for players every year. Mayo haven’t won an All-Ireland in 50-something years, it’s phenomenal how they keep going. Nobody would begrudge them an All-Ireland but I’m not sure they’re any closer now than they were five or six years ago.

“The way the championship is set up at the minute, I can’t see anyone other than Dublin winning it, but if you ever meet them they’re such down-to-earth guys.

“I’ve never met lads who have won so much yet are so level-headed, the likes of Jack McCaffrey and Dean Rock.

“I’ve met a few of them and they wouldn’t have a notion who I am, but they have no problem chatting to you and that’s great to see, that they’re not a closed circuit.

“Obviously you mightn’t get the full picture but they come across as very nice fellas and I think they’re a good example of how to act on and off the field. The success has been brilliant for them and it’s going to take an unbelievable team to beat them.”

Some of the Cavan players haven’t always enjoyed the same perception. Players with potential have dropped off the scene for one reason or another, while even stalwarts like Killian Clarke were questioned when they, god forbid, decided to take some time out this year. Cunningham says it’s unfair when you consider how much they’ve given to the cause in the last decade.

“It’s easy to say Cavan players don’t put in the same effort. I can categorically say they try incredibly hard. Players take a break but sometimes they’ve physically wrecked and need time out.

“I know Mickey Graham and they’re a very committed bunch. They could go and get knocked out in the first round of Ulster but they could also reach the final, you just don’t know.

“From the outside looking in, the problem is that only the top four or five teams have a real, serious belief that they can win the All-Ireland.

“The way the championship is these days, teams like Monaghan and Cavan might have to play three high quality matches just to get to the Super Eights. Kerry and Dublin can usually taper themselves so I think the All-Ireland is unfair. Scrap the provincials, have an open draw and have a proper knock-out championship.”

Nor is he surprised that his former Cavan teammate Mickey Graham has turned out to be a shrewd manager.

“He always had a great interest and a great footballing brain, and that was evident even in the way he played. A few players from that team have become managers, Peter Reilly has done very well as well.

“Mickey has done amazing work with the teams he’s been involved in. He’s very respected and he played football the way it should be played.”

So with Mickey still at the helm, Raymond hopes that they end their latest Ulster title drought in the none-too-distant future – but that’s obviously easier said than done.

“It’s a football-mad county and it’s just a pity they haven’t been a bit more successful.

“Once they’re going well the supporters come out and bring a bit of colour. They love their football and have been in the doldrums too long. Ulster is so long, nearly all the teams have a chance in any given year. If Cavan were in a different province they’d have won more – the whole country knows it’s the hardest province to get out of.”