GOWNA BARELY HAD their hands on the cup after the 2023 Cavan senior football club championship final when they marched as one to the opposite side of the pitch.
The back-to-back celebrations were just beginning in Kingspan Breffni Park, but one club member deserved a special moment with the Oliver Plunkett Cup.
Yanna Hartin was watching from an accessible area at the venue, surrounded by family and friends. A Leaving Cert student and member of the ladies football team, Yanna sustained life-changing injuries in a car accident on the way to her summer job in early August.
Her family is steeped in Gowna GAA tradition. Yanna’s father, Gavin, is a former Cavan footballer and six-time county champion with the club, while her mother, Lukia, hails from nearby Cornafean.
Yanna is a quadruplet; her two brothers, Seán and Fionn, are on the men’s team along with some cousins.
A few minutes after the landslide victory over Kingscourt Stars, they were reunited, all celebrating together as the group showed their unwavering support for the teenager.
“She’s behind us and we want to get behind her,” Gowna captain Ryan McGahern told Paul Fitzpatrick of the Anglo Celt afterwards.
It was a touching gesture, a heartwarming moment which will live long in the memory.
“Look it, they’re a very impressive group and I suppose the scenes after the game was probably a good insight into their character, the embodiment of a great community,” club chairman Cathaldus Hartin, uncle of Yanna, tells The 42 ahead of this weekend’s Ulster quarter-final against Donegal champions Naomh Conaill.
“We’re very proud of how they represent us both on and off the field. There’s good humility to the team and that was evident when they went up to Yanna with the cup. But it’s just an extension to what they do on a daily basis in the club. It’s clear that the group recognise the important role they play in the community.”
The power of the GAA, uniting a town or parish through good times and bad.
Hartin, a former Gowna footballer himself, is secretary of a 12-person committee driving a significant fundraiser, Yanna’s Four Leaf Clover, which symbolises love, luck, faith and hope.
Former Cavan footballer and club chair Ciarán Brady heads up the committee, with a wide variety of other community members, including Colette O’Reilly — part of the backroom team for the Breffni’s Ulster success in 1997 — heavily involved.
They have set a target of €250,000, and are well over halfway there at the time of writing, with the monies raised going towards house adaptations, a suitable vehicle and medical costs.
Yanna has recently been transferred to the National Rehabilitation Centre in Dún Laoghaire to start the next stages of her recovery. “She’s a very positive and determined girl. She has really embraced her rehabilitation and is working exceptionally hard in her recovery,” Hartin reports.
“It’s been very positive and really helpful to Yanna, Gavin, Lukia and their family,” he adds on the fundraising drive.
“They’re very appreciative of the support, Yanna and her parents. They’re overwhelmed by the backing that they’re receiving and the generosity of people, not just in Gowna alone, but in the wider community.
“You can just see the role that the GAA and football plays in knitting people together when needed most.
“There’s always rivalry in GAA circles but that’s all placed to one side when it comes to something like this. The support of our fellow clubs across the county has been really outstanding — and indeed, across the border in Longford.”
As Dermot Crowe best put it in The Irish Independent last month, ‘In Gowna there’s lakes and there’s football, the abiding constants of a small rural half-parish that straddles the border with Longford, rubbing shoulders with Mullinalaghta.’
It’s religion in these parts. It means so much.
“Football, it’s a very important part of our identity here in Gowna,” Hartin says. “It’s really massive.
“We’re a very small area, where a lot of locations meet so we’re squeezed in between several clubs with very strong footballing traditions: Colmcille on one side were the Longford senior champions in 2022, our neighbours Arva are the current junior champions and they’re in an Ulster semi-final next week.
“Mullahoran, another senior club with great tradition and history, reached this year’s minor final on the other side. Then of course, we’re a half-parish with Mullinalaghta. It’s a great achievement for a parish of around 800 people to provide two senior clubs, with Mullinalaghta winning a Leinster senior title in 2018.
“It’s a way of life around here, and really important to everyone.”
And that will be best seen on Sunday, back on the Breffni Park turf when Gowna go head-to-head with Glenties’ Naomh Conaill on the provincial stage [throw-in 4.30pm].
They bowed out at this same juncture last year after a penalty shootout defeat to Enniskillen Gaels, so will be looking to avenge that gut-wrenching loss.
“It’s brilliant to be back competing at an Ulster club level,” Hartin concludes. “This year it was a big achievement in winning back-to-back championships after being out in the cold for over 20 years.
“We’ve got a very young team, they were very successful at underage level and there was potential for success. But getting over the line at senior level is another thing entirely. At the moment, all the focus is on Naomh Conaill. They’ve won four out of the last five championships in Donegal, they’re very experienced and they’re going to be very tough to break down.
“From a player and management perspective, it’s all about preparing to deliver a performance. We’ll see where that brings us. If the group continue to apply themselves under the guidance of Fintan [Reilly], Dermot [McCabe] and Seamus [McCabe], there’s a strong future but you can’t take anything for granted at this level.
“There’s a super atmosphere in the club, and it’s especially encouraging to see the excitement of the kids, the colour and support in the local national school. Hopefully the team will inspire the next generation of boys and girls in the club to continue in the same vein.”
