Sean Cavanagh
By John Harrington
Sean Cavanagh made the commitment to play on with Tyrone for another year because he’s still in love with the game.
Speculation was rife that his stellar inter-county career would be book-ended by his red-card in this year’s All-Ireland SFC Quarter-Final defeat to Mayo.
But a competitor like Cavanagh was never likely to go out on a note like that and he admits not long after the season was over he was already thinking about returning for 16th season with the Red Hand County.
“I took a couple of months to think about it and during those couple of months all I could think about was going back,” said Cavanagh at the launch of the GAA’s new Membership Card and rewards programme, GRMA (go raibh maith agat), in Croke Park.
“I had a couple of niggly injuries and I wanted to see how they would fare out. I’m in reasonable condition injury wise so all those factors combined and then I had a chat with the family and the wife seemed to be happy enough to push me out to get fed somewhere else so there was nothing telling me not to go back, that’s probably the best way of putting it.
“And then when I look and see the age profile of the Tyrone team at the moment, I remember guys that retired in 2002, 2004 or 07 and we went on and won All-Irelands the following year or other titles in other years and I thought it would be too much of a risk almost.
“I have a long life to live and if I can battle on for another year and get a bit of success out of it I might as well do it when I’m still loving it.”
Sean Cavanagh was sent off for Tyrone.
Regardless of whether he was still in love with the game or not, Cavanagh would not have committed to another year with Tyrone if he was not convinced he could still cut it at the highest level.
Making that sort of judgement call is not the gut-instinct it once was. In an era where everything is measured, Cavanagh has all the data he needs to prove he is still an elite performer.
“Every single night you train, you get the whatsapp message the following day about how you performed the previous day and everything is on a ranking basis,” he says.
“You are either looking to the left of the chart or the right of the chart. If you are to the right of the chart you know you didn’t perform all that well last night.
“And if you continue to be on the right of the chart you start asking questions as to whether you can still compete with everyone, so thankfully I have been in around the middle of the chart - I haven’t been to the right too many times and that tells me that my body is still able to compete physically.
“Everyone will always tell you, when you get older, your legs, and they are dead right, you lose that yard of pace or whatever, but when you are actually able to quantify it with the numbers you are able to see how far you are off.
“You are given your top speed, your average speed, your total distance covered. There’s seven or eight different indications. There is nowhere to hide any night you train.
“Yeah, look, that gives me comfort to know I can still physically compete with the younger guys on the team. If that wasn’t the case, if I was continually at the wrong end of the scale I think you would be asking yourself questions, whether you are right to continue to play at this level, and whether you can still compete at this level.”
Being constantly measured and judged against your team-mates every night you go training sounds stressful, but Cavanagh feeds off the competition.
Sean Cavanagh
He has to constantly put his body through the wringer, but he’s addicted to the process of pushing himself to be the best he can be.
“The commitment is mental, completely mental,” he admits. “There is no other way of putting it but at the same time if you didn’t want to do it you wouldn’t do it.
“You realise you have to do it to compete but you do get hooked. You hear about people getting hooked on the gym, you get hooked on that feeling on trying to make yourself better.
“Good strength and conditioning coaches and good coaches with teams will always come up with different ways to keep you interested and keep you excited.
“It’s not hard to do when you know you are competing in a team like Tyrone because you can see the quality of the boys coming behind you and you know if you are not doing that work you’ll not be getting any game time next year. You sort of get caught up in that but look I love every minute of it.”
The Moy clubman will turn 34 next year and he knows he’s now very much in the twilight of his inter-county career. Soon it will all be behind him, and he admits that prospect is a frightening one.
“Yeah, that is really scary. It’s something that I’ve thought about for the last couple of years and you are not sure what really does come next.
“So yeah, that is part of it, whenever going to training on Tuesday and Thursday night has been your life for 16 years or whatever at county level it will be really surreal whenever it does happen that that’s not there.
“It would be an interesting documentary for somebody to do, to follow guys during that initial stage of walking away. I’ve no doubt it will be difficult, but, yeah that’s probably part of it, that I’m almost afraid to walk away.”
