“Our selector had to play one game at corner forward” – Scenic route takes Brady and Arva to Croke Park

"You'd want to be old to have done all that," laughs Ciaran Brady.

Yet he's still in his 20s, albeit in the latter stages of them, at 29. Old to have played in all grades, divisions and championships, at club and county level. It's certainly unique. He's played minor and under-21 for Cavan, winning Ulster titles at both levels. As a senior inter-county player, he's played in Division One, Two, Three and Four in the League while, in the Championship, he's played for the Sam Maguire and the Tailteann Cup. Brady has played in junior, intermediate and senior championships for Arva but for all the things he's seen, and for all the ground he's covered, nothing will compare to this weekend, when Arva take to Croke Park for the AIB All-Ireland junior final. Ciaran Brady in action for Cavan. Sportsfile. The road to HQ hasn't been in any way straight forward, this is what you call the scenic route. Arva reached the Cavan junior final in Brady's second year up, in 2013, but having lost it, they came up and won it the very next season. The momentum carried into 2015, when they made the intermediate final but as was the case at junior level, they had to lose one to win one, which they did in 2016. Four county finals in four years brought them, finally, to senior football but the dream didn't last long as having drawn a nightmare of a group, Gowna relegated them by the end of it. Skipping on, 2020 was surely the year of Brady's life, as he won an Ulster championship and earned an All-Star nomination for Cavan but 2021 was as bad as 2020 was good. He tore his ACL early on in the season, in Cavan's second NFL game against Longford and it's hardly a coincidence that, later on in the year, Arva were relegated. Back down to junior, with Croke Park never seeming so far away.

"I know back in 2021, when we had a few injuries, we had to pull a game or two, we just hadn't enough to field a team," he says flatly.

"We have a panel of 32 now, which is down to a completely full buy-in, which is a testament to our management and our players too. "But back in '21, I missed that year with the ACL, Johnny McCabe our captain in '16, he was travelling in Australia, we were decimated with injuries and our selector Raymond Daly, he was 40 plus, he had to play one game at corner forward, having not played in a few years." [caption id="attachment_296706" align="alignnone" width="1000"] Ciaran Brady in action against Eoin Murchan of Dublin in the 2020 All-Ireland senior football semi-final. Sportsfile.[/caption] Excited as he was to leave 2021 behind him, 2022 began in a similar vein as his knee injury continued to restrict him. "I was every bit of the 12 months coming back," he says. "I remember playing a challenge game in Cork with Cavan and I started that game but I knew in the back of my head that I wasn't right. "Cavan were in the Tailteann Cup a few weeks later and I played the semi-final against Sligo, but I wasn't right." "I was getting pains in it. I went back to the club and missed a few of the trainings leading up to the county final.

"I had to go and get a second opinion on it, went up to Belfast eventually and got a screw out, it was giving me awful bother and pain. "After that, it hasn't given me any issues in the last 13 months thankfully."

And suddenly things picked up again. A relatively small village in Cavan, Brady credits their success to an underage amalgamation with their neighbours Killeshandra, which he says raised the standards of many of their players. "I think the amalgamation was positive. We hadn't many on the county team. I don't know when there was a senior footballer from our club in recent times and even at minor level, it was hard to get recognised. "But then we joined with Killeshandra, to become St Joseph's, we got to a county minor final in Division One. "A lot of the core of that team, including myself, were on the county minors then and we went on and won an Ulster minor with Cavan which was first one for thirty odd years. "Playing at that high grade stood to us. "We won two under-21 championships, reaching an Ulster final against Conor Glass, Ciaran McFaul and Emmett Bradley's Glen, lost by a few."

"But I do think our underage success has led to us having a better team at senior level."

And it's all led to this day. "It's pretty special, the entire town is gone bonkers that we're heading for Croke Park on Sunday. "Most people from Arva have only been in Croke Park in Cavan jerseys so to be going down Jones' Road with your Arva jersey on is something special." Read more:

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[caption id="attachment_296695" align="alignnone" width="971"] Ciarán Brady of Avra St Patrick's pictured ahead of the AIB GAA Club Football All-Ireland Intermediate Championship Final, between Arva and Listowel Emmets.[/caption]