In the 'sixties, Cavan vied with Down to be kingpins of all-Ireland as well as all-Ulster. Forty years after featuring in Cavan's 1969 Ulster SFC success, Pat Tinnelly tells Kevin Carney that he loved adding his tuppence-worth to that rivalry Pat Tinnelly talks football with the same passion and fluidity that he brought to the game when a glue-like defender. He's in his element talking about the big ball game. Even when asked to recall the finer details of some of the momentous games he was involved in when a bulwark of great Cavan teams of yesteryear, he invariably hits the sweet spot. It's incredible to think that the ageless Kingscourt man figured in Cavan's shock Ulster SFC success of 1969. The forty years that have come and gone since have been kind to him. Not that his stellar intercounty career had its genesis in '69. In fact, the bould Tinnelly is wont to wax lyrical about the trauma that was the team's 1967 successful campaign too. He recalls how the Breffni blues fell to Cork at Croke Park when some ill luck and bad calls by the referee conspired to let Cork off the hook. A jersey pull on Garret O'Reilly anybody? Pat recalls that the senior county panels of '67 and '69 (under the management of Mick Higgins) were so much alike in personnel as to be almost indistuinguishable. Indeed save the inclusion of Enda McGowan (Ballyhaise) in '69, there were little or no alterations made to the Cavan squad over the course of the 1967-'69 era. Pointedly, Pat fingers the unavailability through injury of John Joe Reilly (Crosserlough) as pivotal to Cavan's defeats around that time. He viewed Reilly as the dynamo of the team. Scanning the years that preceded the end of the sixties, one of the stars of all Kingscourt Stars says that Cavan could rightly claim to have been one of the best teams around then. "We won the 1967 Ulster championship and we should have beaten Cork. After that we won the Grounds Tournament in Wembley, beating the '67 All-Ireland winners Meath. "Then in '68 Down beat us in the provincial final, after John Joe couldn't play because of injury. He was great at orchestrating the whole forward line at that time. "Down went onto win the All-Ireland in '68. I'd say we could have argued that we were the second best team in Ireland that year and there or thereabouts in all three of those years." Pat admits that the Cavan senior players during that era felt a huge weight of expectation each time they went on the championship road. The county was pregnant with Cup fever. "I remember we had a huge support with us in '69 at Casement Park for the Ulster final. The bookies said it was a 50/50 game but our supporters were sure we were going to do it. "Down had a great team then though and Sean O'Neill was a real bogey player for us. Down feared us as much as feared them though. Sean O'Neill admitted as much. "He told me on different occasions that Down always felt they had a good chance of winning the Sam Maguire Cup in those years once they had gotten over us. "There was a great spirit about those Cavan teams and I think the likes of O'Neill knew that. Cavan had also beaten Down in the '62 final and they hadn't forgotten that either. "Down and Cavan were two very well matched teams in the 'sixties. Apart from O'Neill up front, they had the likes of James McCartan and Paddy Doherty too in the forward line." Pat, a tigerish half-back, was wont to mark John Purdy more often than not when the Mournemen and Cavan clashed. Pat felt there was a mutual respect between the two on the field. The Kingscourt ace was drafted into the Cavan panel in 1962, less than 12 months after he had lined out for the county minors and way ahead of schedule as he himself thought then. "I more or less was brought in to make up the numbers for the training at Kilnacrott," he reveals. "Unfortunately ended up hurting my knee in training in the run-up to the semi-final. "I was a sub for the game (semi-final) with Roscommon. I remember I was mad to get onto the pitch. But just being part of things at that stage of my career was a real thrill." Pat's senior football career with his beloved Cavan spanned 1962-77. His last game for the county was against Armagh at the Athletic Grounds in the first round of the Ulster SFC. In 1976 he captained the Fr. Benny Maguire-managed Cavan side to the Ulster SFC final. The contest went to a replay but, alas, the Tommy/Larry Diamond axis helped floor Cavan. "In hindsight, I should have quit the county after we lost the replay. Instead, I hung on another year but didn't enjoy it and told Fr. Benny that I wasn't hanging around any more." The 1969 campaign is the stand-out for campaign for our man Farrelly though for he truly believes that the Sam Maguire Cup ought to have been brought back to Cavan that year. After beating Down in the provincial final that year, Cavan fancied themselves, big-time. Pat remembers parading the Anglo-Celt Cup at various carnivals across the county. However he insists their subsequent slip-up to Offaly in the next game wasn't due to cockiness. It wasn't "a case of Cavan having lost the run of themselves after the '69 final." "No, there was no question that we went into that game in any way complacent. Offaly were a coming team with a lot of classy players and a growing reputation as a fine football team. "Men like Tony McTague, Nicholas Clavin, Kevin Kilmurray and Willie Bryans were as good as there were in the country at that time. But I still think we hadn't our homework done. "We hadn't played them before we met them in the '69 semi-final in Croke Park. We had heard of those fellas but hadn't played against them so we were going into the unknown. "Unfortunately for us, they had done their homework on us. And, on top of that, they played to their strengths and when it came to the crunch, they got the better of us." So Offaly caught Cavan on the hop then? "Well, we were surprised by how well they could keep the ball, control the game and stop us regaining possession whenever we lost it going forward. "I think that Offaly team brought Gaelic football up to a new level after Down had brought it to a higher level in the years before that. "We missed the boat though. We had a 21 yards free and missed it. I think drawing with them was a big let-down for us. It was as if the bubble had burst. "There was a bit of rejigging done with the line-up for the replay. It was another tough game. They were quicker and got the goals. We were slow to learn from our mistakes though." Pat confesses that through all the wins and defeats, he had a whale of a time with successive Cavan panels. There was a great social element attached to the whole scene. The craic he had north, south, east and west - and over in London for the Wembley Tournament - provide memories he wouldn't trade for the world. He says he had the satisfaction of playing alongside and against some really wonderful footballers. McTague, Bryans, Seamus Leydon (Galway), John Joe Reilly, Charlie Gallagher and Gene Cusack, to name but a few. Married to Kerry lady Francis and father of Padraig, Siobhan, Ronan and Roisin, the former Cavan great enjoyed some thrilling times with Kingscourt too, he hastens to add. He details the club's triumphs in 1976 (IFC), 1980 (SFC), 1981 (SFC) and says one was sweeter than the next. Thankful that he didn't suffer any serious injuries in his career while playing for club or county, the long-time Gypsum employee says that while there were as many ups as there were downs over the years on the football field, he hasn't a single regret. Now how many of us can say that? Tweet

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