THE INSIDE TRACK
Cavan boss McGleenan has no room for sentiment against native county
LAST Tuesday, Mattie McGleenan was found where he’s most comfortable, barking instruction on the side of a football field. There may have been a mid-term break for schools down south but they had no such luxury on the other side of the border. ‘No rest for us up here,’ the Cavan manager remarked with a chuckle.
So, he was watching players from St Pat’s Armagh, the school where he teaches PE and where the former Tyrone forward set out on the journey that led him into the Cavan dug-out last winter. Seventeen years ago, when McGleenan was still a young teacher in his 20s, he led the school to their first MacRory Cup (Ulster Colleges SFC) in 47 years. Seán Cavanagh was pivotal to that team. Teacher and pupil forged a friendship that remains but today, they will occupy opposing dressing rooms in Healy Park.
For Cavan supporters of a certain vintage, McGleenan will always be one of those hard-working corner-forwards Tyrone seemed to produce at will during the 1990s. What differentiated the Eglish native from everyone else was his penchant for fisted goals. He broke Cavan hearts with just such a score in the 1995 Ulster final. He’s been reminded of that once or twice since taking the job, but you can’t change history.
Nor can he change where he’s from. He still lives in Eglish, the small village in south Tyrone that was also home to the late Cormac McAnallen. So, he accepts that trying to out-wit Mickey Harte will create a fair bit of interest in today’s fixture.
He tries to avoid the issue as skilfully as he once side-stepped corner-backs. ‘I am a Tyrone man, and will always be a Tyrone man but Cavan asked me to come down and do a job for their senior football team. That’s my sole focus. Sentiment can’t come into it.
‘Like every other Tyrone person, I have enjoyed the 15 years of fabulous football that Mickey has brought to the county, but it is not something I am going to dwell on. What I see ahead of my team is the challenge presented by one of the best teams in Ireland. I have to make sure our boys rise to it. Where I am from doesn’t come into it.’
McGleenan has bumped into plenty of familiar faces since becoming an inter-county manager. It was with Scotstown in Monaghan that he copper-fastened his coaching reputation, claiming three county titles in four years (as well as three league titles).
Cavan earned their first point against their neighbours in a turgid arm-wrestle last time out and Monaghan had five Scotstown men on the team. For a brief moment, McGleenan had to prevent himself from shouting instructions at Darren Hughes, one of his former charges.
‘It was surreal, meeting the five Scotstown lads when I was in the other dressing room. I worked with those boys for four years, four great years. But we are all football men at the end of the day.’ McGleenan had been the first outside manager appointed by Scotstown, so there was pressure on him from the first day. ‘There were a few eyebrows raised when Mattie got the job,’ recalls Kevin Connolly who was club chairman at the time. ‘And there were a few that said he shouldn’t have been given the job because he was an outside man. But those of us who were on the committee and who saw his CV, we knew he was the right man for the job.’ It didn’t take McGleenan long to prove that. ‘He had such enthusiasm for it, that he brings boys along. I think you will see that in Cavan, as well,’ Connolly says. Of course, Cavan has its own pressures. A county forever looking backwards to their five All-Ireland titles, they have had ten different management teams in 20 years. But Terry Hyland has left McGleenan a solid foundation, with the county having won four Ulster Under 21 titles in a row between 2011 and 2014 and playing in the League’s top flight for the first time in two decades. ‘Terry left a group of players with a great attitude, that are eager to learn and improve. And where
1 Cavan have one point to show from their opening two League games after drawing away to Monaghan
better to learn than in Division 1?
‘We learnt more about ourselves in that one game against Dublin than we did in the first couple of months of training, The boys made six or seven unforced errors and each of them were punished. That’s what happens at this level,’ the 43year-old observes.
‘We have Donegal and Kerry in Breffini, go to Castlebar to play Mayo. It is fantastic for this group of players.
‘Mickey Harte said a few years ago that the All-Ireland champions will always come out of Division 1. So at some point over the spring, these Cavan players will test themselves against the team that will win this year’s All-Ireland, if they have not done so already. That will stand to them.’
McGleenan wants his team to play in a positive manner and even though Cavan will be the underdogs in almost every game this spring, that won’t change.
‘I want my team pressurising the opposition high up the field, defending from the front. That won’t change but I will play a style that suits my team best and that I think will get the best out of the players.’
His neighbour, Lorcan Martin, is part of his backroom team and his company shortens the 80-minute journey from Eglish to Breffini Park. Even if spring turns into a harsh education for Cavan, McGleenan will savour every second of it.
‘I am thoroughly enjoying myself, enjoying every moment of this job so far, they are a great bunch of guys in Cavan, who want to get the best of themselves as players.
‘There’s a quote that sums up being a coach for me. “Sport doesn’t give you character, it reveals your character” and these Cavan boys have been revealing their character to us over the last couple of months, they are hungry for success, they want to get better, they want Cavan football to be at the top table.
‘I see in the dressing room the same sort of characters that I sat beside in the Tyrone dressing room more than 20 years ago. Characters who have the same attitude, same drive and will to win.’
Given that Tyrone team won two Ulster titles and came within a refereeing decision of claiming an All-Ireland, those are encouraging words for any Cavan supporter to hear.