Martin McHugh, who as Cavan manager led the county to their first Ulster football championship title since 1969, has told the Cavan county board that he will not be available to continue in the post. McHugh, who won an All-Ireland medal with Donegal in 1992, has been in charge of the Cavan team for the past three years.
He informed the Cavan county board of his decision on Wednesday night and it was accepted "with regret". McHugh, from Kilcar in Donegal, gave the Cavan team a new confidence in themselves and the crowds turned out in huge numbers as interest in Cavan football was revived and the glory years of the 1930s, '40s and '50s were recalled.
It was estimated that Cavan supporters outnumbered those from Kerry at Croke Park last Sunday by a ratio of seven to one in a crowd of well over 60,000. McHugh, who was born in 1961, won three Ulster championship medals with Donegal, in 1983, 1990 and 1992, the year in which they went on to beat Dublin by 0-18 to 0-14 in the All-Ireland final. He was also a member of the Donegal team which won the All-Ireland under-21 final in 1982. He won Donegal club championship medals with Kilcar in 1980, 1985, 1989 and 1993.
Explaining his reasons for stepping down, McHugh said he had to put his family first. A company representative, he is required to travel widely as part of his job, covering Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal.
For Cavan training sessions he had to make a round trip of 200 miles from Kilcar and, with Cavan qualifying for the All-Ireland semi-final this year, this involved trips several times a week, including at weekends. This year Cavan beat Fermanagh, after a replay, Donegal in the Ulster semi-final and Derry in the final. The secretary of the Cavan county board, Gerry Soden, said yesterday that everyone in the county would be sad to see McHugh go. "We were at a very low ebb in Cavan when he agreed to join us. We hadn't won an Ulster championship match since 1987 and we were in Division Three of the National League. Things were in a bad way. "Everybody in Cavan is very grateful to him. He has given us back our pride. He brought a new sense of purpose to the county team and has given many young players great encouragement and incentive. He earned the respect of everyone and he has our very best wishes for the future.
"He has a wife and three young children and he has to put them first. It will be very difficult to replace him," Soden said. The Cavan county board will set up a small committee to decide on a replacement.
"Needless to say we will not be rushing it, but we would like to have a new man in place in time to take charge of team for our National League match against Kerry in New York in October. We will be taking that match very seriously," said Soden. "We are in a very strong group in the new league set-up and we hope to be able to build on what we have done so far with Martin McHugh's help. He has laid good foundations at under-21 and senior level and it is up to us now to make the most of that," he concluded. The league group Soden refers to, Section C, certainly looks the strongest of the four. It contains Kerry, Cavan and Offaly - three of the four provincial champions - as well as Dublin and Tyrone. Wexford, Monaghan and Sligo are the other members. The top two teams in each group will go into the league quarter-finals. Sligo, like many other teams in a similar situation, are unsure about the new set-up. On the one hand they are delighted to be meeting teams like Kerry and Dublin, but they are apprehensive about being overwhelmed. The secretary of the Sligo county board, Tom Kilcoyne, admits that he has mixed feelings himself. "We have made very good progress under (team manager) Mickey Moran and were heartened to have run Mayo to a single point in the Connacht final. But we have to be patient and hope we are not biting off more than we can chew," he said.
Section B of the new set-up also looks a pretty difficult one, with Derry, Donegal, Meath and Armagh the strongest of the teams contending for the two quarterfinal places.
In Section A, Mayo and Galway look the strongest teams, while in Section D, Cork, Kildare, Wicklow, Down, Clare and Roscommon would appear to be the obvious contenders for the two quarter-final places. Sunday's All-Ireland semi-final between Mayo and Offaly represents the first time the two will have met in the championship. Their last competitive meeting was in the National League as far back as December 1984 when Mayo won 2-13 to 0-9 in Tullamore. The only link with that match is Mayo defender Dermot Flanagan, who played at centre half-back that day. Mayo's record in semi-finals is not impressive. They have contested 35 such ties, losing 26 and winning nine. They have beaten Kerry four times while their other victories have been over Cork, Wexford, Cavan, Armagh and Tyrone. Offaly will be playing in their 10th semi-final. They have won five and lost four so far. Mayo were beaten in a replay by Meath in last year's final, while Offaly have not played in the final since 1982, when they put an end to Kerry's bid to record their fifth title in-a-row.
The rather farcical situation in Castlebar on Wednesday night, when local and national press who had been invited to a press conference were deprived of interviews with the Mayo players, has brought to light one amusing story. The players left by the back door of the, inaptly named, Welcome Inn Hotel after they had finished their meal, but the sports editor of the Connaught Telegraph, John Melvin, found a way around his dilemma. Realising, earlier in the week, that he would not be able to speak to the players prior to Sunday's match, he decided to beat the interview ban by speaking at length to A N Other.
Needless to say, the interview sheds little light on the possible outcome, particularly in view of the fact that A N Other seems to believe that Mayo are meeting Meath.
