Tyrone’s deity

At a time when the county wouldn’t have made anybody’s shortlist for potential All-Ireland champions, they threw him in when he was still a minor. In three outings prior to that Christmas, the teenager scored a mind-boggling 2-13 and they soon realized the team could do without him no more. The stock of the jersey would be inextricably linked to Canavan from then until now.
If he takes his leave of the game after the All-Ireland final next Sunday, Canavan will have earned his place in history the hard way. Should Tyrone defeat Kerry and hand him his second winners’ medal, that’s still not the bounty he deserves for the pleasure he has brought fans for nearly two decades. Beyond the boundaries of a homeland where he is rightly regarded as a kind of living deity, Canavan has straddled two eras in the sport, been the greatest forward of his generation, and endured longer than all of his contemporaries. Little wonder then that in the dying moments of the All-Ireland semi-final against Armagh, Sean Cavanagh implored Canavan to take what would prove to be the match-winning free.
“He was down on the ground injured when the free was awarded and I went up to him and said, ‘please Peter take it,'” said Cavanagh afterwards. “I begged him. I knew he was the only man for the job. He said, ‘no Mugsy’s (Owen Mulligan) alright’ and I just grabbed him and I said ‘get up there, Peter’. I told him it was the last kick of the game and there is no other player in Ireland that I’d have kicking it than Peter Canavan. He really is a legend in Tyrone but I don’t know what this is going to make him now.”
When Tyrone faced Dublin in the quarterfinals earlier in the summer, the 34-year-old with more miles on the clock all of his peers was the only survivor from the 1995 All-Ireland final between the counties. That decider was one where Canavan notched a handy 11 points and could legitimately claim later that his team had been done out of a draw by some very bad refereeing. In the wake of that defeat, there was a horrible sense too that he would go down in the annals — like several Tyrone men before him — as one of the greatest players never to hold Sam Maguire.
Of course, that was a gross under-estimation of the size of his own determination and the nature of his county’s footballers. The 1995 edition might not have been quite up to the task but though it took eight more years, he was still around and captain, too, when Mickey Harte brought a new model into the Croke Park showrooms. Their path to the county’s first All-Ireland title that summer may have been justifiably pockmarked by criticisms of their playing style but nobody on the island begrudged Canavan finally getting his hands on the trophy.
Against Armagh that day, the genius who had plundered 1-38 back in the 1995 championship had been diminished by the passage of time and severely hampered by an ankle injury. Yet, Harte’s masterstroke was to let him start the game before taking him off, and then re-introducing him near the end. His re-appearance at a point in crucial matches when Armagh were traditionally strongest was a brilliant psychological maneuver, lifting his team and supporters and dismaying their opponents.
Better yet, from the podium that afternoon, the captain showed a keen sense of history when paying tribute to the Tyrone side of 1986 that had briefly threatened to dethrone the great Kerry team. Apart from crediting those individuals with lighting “a flame that is still burning,” Canavan remembered all of those other players who had played on county teams without success through the decades. There was a time when objective football fans everywhere would have expected him to end up as one more of that number. That he didn’t is largely down to the fact his determination has always matched the size of his talent.
“He’s been around so long but he’s still so committed to the task,” said Mickey Harte a couple of years back. “People don’t fully appreciate what he has to offer. You see the football ability on the field: the skill, the vision, the finishing, but there’s a hidden ingredient that you only recognize when you’re close to him, working with him.”
Canavan’s longevity is all the more remarkable given the sapping nature of the Ulster championship. It has been the most competitive of the provincial competitions over the past 10 years or so. The sheer intensity of the local rivalries has probably cut short a few inter-county careers and yet, a small forward like Canavan has shipped the punishment, dished out some of his own, and survived. Despite a raft of injury problems that would have forced lesser men to call it quits, his presence even in a cameo role next Sunday will be a fitting end to what has been a marvelous career.
“I’ve been there when we’ve lost an All-Ireland final and I know what it’s like — and it’s not a nice feeling,” said Canavan after beating Armagh. “I don’t want to anticipate us being in that position again. No All-Ireland is easy won, especially when it’s against the quality of a team like Kerry. Obviously I’m delighted with yesterday’s result and relieved to have got over such a difficult hurdle but the unfortunate thing is that there were no medals given out. We will be looking for big improvements and will be on our guard because they are a hungry team.”
If Kerry can be described as hungry, there are no words for the appetite that Canavan has brought to the fray.