GAA Match Programmes – June 29, 2019

11

By Paul Fitzpatrick

NORTHERN EXPOSURE

Once upon a time in Ulster football, there was
Cavan and not much else. In the social order,
the Blues were the aristocrats.

If there was a middle class, it was occupied
by Antrim and Monaghan, not that they
were particularly upwardly mobile. As for the
rest? They were penniless. Trespassers on a
private estate, summarily dealt with once
they were cornered.

An example? Cavan were the holders of the
Ulster Championship in 1891 but then, due to
dwindling interest, it lapsed for nine whole years
and the county just claimed those titles as their
own – all nine seasons, during which a ball was
never kicked.

That artificially bumped their total of Ulster
titles up from 34 to 43, at a time when
Armagh, Down, Donegal, Derry, Tyrone and
Fermanagh had one between them. It was
like querying the difference in the figures
after the decimal point on a billionaire’s bank
balance. Who was going to argue?

In the 27 years prior to 1955, Cavan had,
including replays, appeared in 13 All-Ireland
senior finals, winning five – including three in six
glorious years between 1947 and ’52.
It all began to change, though, in the late 1950s.
Tyrone were first to make a breakthrough when
they won their maiden Ulster title in 1956.

There was a photograph, printed across
four columns in The Irish Press on Monday,
July 30th, of that year, the morning after the
Ulster final, that brilliantly illustrates the
changing of the guard.

It shows the Cavan goalmouth, at the town
end of St Tiernach’s Park in Clones, with an
umpire reaching for a green flag and Tyrone
goalscorer Donal Donnelly, wearing number
12, swaggering back to his position, his head

TYRONE NUMBER 12,

DONAL DONNELLY

cocked to the side as he surveys the crowd, who

have encroached on the sideline.

On the left is Cavan goalkeeper Séamus Morris,

helplessly panned out on the turf. To the right

is full-forward Frank Higgins, airborne, as he

follows up Donnelly’s shot, lashing the ball into

the roof of the net again in celebration.

And in the middle is a Tyrone supporter, who

has broken clear of the rest and raced on to

the pitch with an arm and all five fingers out-

stretched seeking the hand of Donnelly, who is

impervious.