16 years ago, the Waterford footballers denied Cavan promotion with a shock win at Kingspan Breffni Park.
"I remember it well, it was a great victory," manager John 'Jackson' Kiely told WLR's Lár Na Páirce show. "What people forget is that we were a good team and we went and gave Kerry a game a couple of weeks later. Kerry went on to win the All Ireland that year."
Cavan were red hot favourites after a 28 point win over Waterford the year before. "We met in Dungarvan and it was towards the end of the league campaign as well. Cavan were riding high and we were very depleted on the day and Cavan beat us 7-15 to 0-8. They were kicking goals for fun. I remember coming off the field some of the forwards were having a bit of a skit. I was saying ‘I hope we get another shot at these fellas when we’re at full strength.’ It came a bit sooner than I thought!"
Kiely got pre-match motivation from an unlikely source. "Somebody gave me the programme and I saw this piece on the programme. It said, ‘If Cavan are beaten by lowly Waterford, who they had beaten by 28 points the previous year, this would be the biggest shock since the sinking of the Titanic.’ You didn’t need any nuggets for players after that! They knew then ‘we’re going to sink this ship today.’"
A Cavan official spotted some of the Waterford players with chocolate and sweets before the game. "On the way into the game, I was getting out of the car and the Cavan county board chairman was at the entrance. Tom Wall used to like a few sweets. The boys were going in and the Cavan county board chairman said to me ‘Are the boys coming on the bus?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s the team.’ ‘Some of those lads are eating chocolate,” he said. I could see him growing in confidence. So, when I went in I was telling the boys and we had a bit of craic. They were only buying the stuff for afterwards!”
Kiely got his tactics spot on. "The previous year we were like sitting ducks in Dungarvan. This time, I said 'what we'll do here lads is instead of playing one sweeper, we'll play two.' We had two really intelligent guys in the corners: Stephen Cunningham and Jason Ryan. Their job was to come back and be the two sweepers between the two lines of defence. I could see the Cavan lads thinking 'what's going on here?' We were probably one of the first teams to start the blanket defence!"
Waterford won 0-14 to 1-9 as Cavan missed out on promotion. "They were in a state of a shock. I won’t tell you what the Cavan chairman said to me on the way out! I just said 'we might be good at the hurling but we can play football as well.'"
Listen back to the full interview with John 'Jackson' Kiely from Friday's Lár Na Páirce.
