Breffni boss aims to give Mayo a bolt from the Blues

BOBBY, his young son, is crying for his bottle so Marty McElkennon wonders if you could ring back in 10 minutes.

Babies need to be fed. Life doesn’t stop because Cavan are in the unanticipated position of being in the final 12, being fancied by some to add Mayo to the scalps of Donegal and Meath in the Hyde this Saturday.

So, you give him 20 minutes. And his phone’s engaged. Busy times for the youngest inter-county manager in the country.

“I seem to putting one phone down to pick up another but I’m not going to complain. It is a great position to be in, playing football on the brink of August, there are 20 teams in the country who would love to be in our position.”

And there’s plenty of people trying to put rhyme and reason as to how Cavan got this far. After taking Tyrone to the brink in the Ulster semi-final, Mickey Harte’s side wiped the floor with them in the replay.

Leaving a 21-point defeat behind them in Clones that evening, Cavan looked a broken team. When McElkennon was appointed alongside Eamon Coleman in 2003, their main remit was removing the fragile core that has become a characteristic of Cavan football.

“That game, that wasn’t anything that anyone did on the day.

“In the first 35 minutes of the replay, we had 11 scoring chances and scored four points. Tyrone had seven scoring chances and scored 3-4. So, we had more scoring chances in the first half than Tyrone. But when you fall that far behind, it is difficult for any player to keep going and we just fell apart in the second half.

“But leaving that game aside, we have accounted for ourselves fairly well. It is always difficult when you are beaten in the championship, whether it be by one point or 21 points. In fairness, the credit has to go to the players. They know they let themselves down against Tyrone and they took responsibility for that.

“We had six days to prepare for the qualifiers. Players don’t get fit in six days. It all came down to attitude.”

Attitude. It is what Coleman and McElkennon set about adjusting when they arrived in Cavan for their first training session. The story goes that Coleman arrived at the grounds and saw two well-known county players loitering at the dressing-room door, claiming injury.

Another player decided he forgot his playing gear. Thirty seconds into his managerial career with Cavan, players bore witness to Coleman’s infamous temper. Needless to say, playing gear hasn’t been forgotten since.

When Coleman eased into the background earlier this year for health reasons, McElkennon was parachuted into the management role.

The Tyrone native had never had a job of such magnitude. And following the Red Hand defeat, people were questioning. The questions lasted six days.

A fancied Donegal side arrived in Breffini for the qualifying match and were torn apart in the first half. They rallied in the second half, but Cavan hung on for a one-point victory.

“The players had to answer their critics and that is exactly what they did, both with the Donegal and Meath games.”

The defeat of Meath has brought these Cavan players into uncharted waters. And that, in itself, has had an effect on how things are going.

“Momentum has been gathering since the Donegal game. It is not really something you can put your finger on, but the thing is most of these footballers are used to being out of the championship in June, playing football at the moment is something new and exciting and that builds its own kind of confidence.

“Mayo will be our seventh game this year, not even Armagh have played seven games in the championship so far.

“And that is another new thing for Cavan. You have to go back to the ’50s for the last time a Cavan side played seven times in a summer.”

It’s all exciting for McElkennon too, of course. He is used to being in the shadow of a more high-profile manager, whether it be Coleman with Cavan or Dom Corrigan in Fermanagh (whom they took to the All-Ireland quarter-final in 2003). Now, he is centre-stage with engaged phones and hungry babies.

Enjoying it, though.

“Yeah, you would have to be. That is what we are in football for, for days like this.

“And we are playing Mayo too, who were in last year’s All-Ireland final. It is a step up for us again, but we are ready. We are just going to Roscommon, trying to reflect the team spirit we have built up.”

When Coleman and McElkennon sat down at the start of the summer, they outlined two ambitions for Cavan. One was to reach the Ulster U-21 final, which they did, losing to Down in extra-time, the second was to reach the final 12 of the championship.

“And who knows? We might go further. Nobody is expecting us to, whereas Mayo people are already looking ahead to a quarter-final with Kerry. Cavan supporters probably don’t even know we will play Kerry if we win on Saturday.”