EVEN more so now in the misshapen sphere of Gaelic football, nothing stands out quite like a classy forward.
As a goalkeeper, I’ve always watched football almost with a defensive mindset. I don’t want to be the Alan Hansen figure but, when most see what the forward did right for a great score, I see what the defender did wrong first.
There are certain scores that you can do absolutely nothing about. They are very rare. The two scores that took Tyrone from a point down to a point up in July’s Ulster final were two such efforts.
Peter Harte’s winner was extraordinary. Donegal had every right not to press the ball quite so hard in that area. Sometime a defender has to weigh the percentages and take his chances that Harte won’t almost clear the top posts from 55 yards.
If you could measure the chance that his shot would come off as a percentage, what would it be? Five? Two? Less? I rate the score before it even more highly. In nine seconds that Sean Cavanagh had the ball in his hands, no fewer than six defenders engaged in trying to stop him.
Three of them congregated on him as soon as he stepped inside the Donegal 45. He bulldozed his way out of the bumper-to-bumper congestion but even the country road he took himself down had obstacles to pass. He carried the ball until he had nowhere else to go before he sent it skyrocketing.
“God directed, up into the air….and God was directing it,” exclaimed RTÉ commentator Ger Canning as it came back down on the back of Mark Anthony McGinley’s goal. In nine seconds, he had summed up his entire career.
Sean Cavanagh will go down as one of the all-time greats of Gaelic football. Five Allstars, three All-Irelands, a pocketful of Ulster and National League medals - accolades owing as much to his displays of leadership as his ability.
That score was a combination of the two. The ability to conjure something out of nothing like that is one thing, but to conjure it when you’re a point down in the 71st minute of an Ulster final? That’s irreplaceable.
This Tyrone team has flourished over the past 18 months. Harte, Mattie Donnelly and Tiernan McCann have emerged as new leaders, men to take a game to the opposition in times of strife.
But the All-Ireland quarter-final defeat by Mayo in September proved how much they still need Sean Cavanagh. In fact, they need him more than ever. That they went down to 14 men that afternoon had an impact but it was more the identity of the absent body that really told in the frantic dying few minutes.
As they spurned one opportunity after the other to salvage a draw, you couldn’t help but wonder if he would have made sure he got on the end of one of those chances had he still been on the field.
The timing of his score against Donegal proved that the legs are still there for 70 minutes. Peter Donnelly has helped transform Tyrone into one of the fittest teams in the land, if not the fittest. And even at the age of 34, Sean Cavanagh leads the runs at training.
He sets the tone in gym sessions. From a playing perspective, he has absolutely no need to retire. What is required from him in 2017, though, is to be a different kind of leader. Over the past few seasons, he’s carried the number 14 jersey, but it’s been mostly a pre-season, National League kind of fix.
The harder the ground gets, the further he plays from the opposition goal. There are days when Tyrone can appear vertically challenged around the middle of the park. Times they do need his physical presence on kick-outs.
But with the decreasing number of contested kick-outs in the middle, and the fact that there are no shortage of fresh men to carry the ball at pace for Tyrone, they must review the effectiveness of having their prized asset out there.
Mayo could see from the Ulster final how an ultra-defensive shape could frustrate Tyrone. All that horsepower is no use if you’ve nowhere to gallop. Everyone expected Croke Park to suit the Red Hands but the 40 yards in front of the Mayo goal would still have been 40 yards on any other pitch, and they filled it with green-and-red jerseys.
Crucially though, Tyrone were so one-dimensional that they almost became easy to defend against. It was a flat performance but Mayo’s discipline has laid a template now for teams looking to beat Tyrone.
What they were crucially missing was a guaranteed, ball-winning outlet in the full-forward line. Brendan Harrison got on top of his battle with Ronan O’Neill very early and maintained the stranglehold to the point where Mayo’s sweeper was able to push further out and help form the wall along their 45 that turned away so many runners.
Tyrone so badly needed the option to kick. Cavanagh would offer them that option. He can win the ball in front or over his head, he can shoot off either foot, he can draw frees with his bullish strength.
All through his career, he could easily have played at full-forward. But particularly from 2010 until 2015, at a time when you could have seen him make the transition, Tyrone needed him elsewhere more.
Now, they need Sean Cavanagh at 14. It may require patience from him and draw frustration because they won’t always be able to, or even want to, kick the ball to him. But he would be a colossal distraction to the opposition defence. No sweeper would push out to the 45 if he was one-on-one behind them. He would create the space to let the runners flourish. And if they need the kick, then it will be there for them.
It’s the one thing this Tyrone team are missing and 2017 is their last chance to bring it to the table.
