Cavanagh can still call shots
SOMETHINGS, apparently, never goes out of fashion like Seán Cavanagh’s shimmy.
I would be a rich man if I got a euro for every time I was asked how players keep falling for his trademark trick and there is no answer to that.
I remember in a League game a few years back Anthony Maher, marking Cavanagh, made it his pre-match mission that he would not get suckered by football’s most famous shuffling feet.
‘Watch the right, watch the right,’ was the mantra he kept repeating to himself throughout the game and he did, but the thing was he was soon clawing at air as, in an instant, Cavanagh went to the left and popped a point.
Maher came back in with the look of a man who had seen his week’s wages burned by a three-card trick merchant.
He was at it again last weekend, coming off the bench to kick three points against Monaghan and he remains the most powerful argument as to why Tyrone present the greatest danger to Dublin this year.
The theory is that Tyrone do not possess the potency in their forward line to win an All-Ireland, but that ignores the reality that they will only need enough to get the job done.
When, as I suspect, they face Dublin in the semi-final – the defining game of this year’s Championship – they will not come with a loaded gun for a shoot-out.
They will seek to suffocate and to strike, most likely form deep, just like Cavanagh and Peter Harte did in last year’s Ulster final.
Cavanagh, who has to be in anyone’s list of the top five players over the last 25 years, retains that capacity to strike from the shadows with boots that are only marginally less dangerous than the most lethal swinging hips that the game has ever seen.