Family affair will be a ‘mighty occasion’, says goalscorer Dolan

ANTHONY CUNNINGHAM’S breakthrough success with Garrycastle has been tempered slightly by a potential dual dilemma in February.

Garrycastle’s reward for becoming the first Westmeath club to win the AIB Leinster title is an All-Ireland semi-final date with St Brigid’s of Roscommon on February 19.

That’s the same St Brigid’s team that Cunningham managed successfully himself while it’ll literally pit family against family as seven Dolan cousins are split between each side.

Perhaps, more significantly from boss Cunningham’s point of view is the potential fixture difficulty caused by his football team’s progress. He’s also the new Galway hurling boss and, according to the GAA’s Master Fixtures list, the Tribesmen are due to play Ulster in the Interprovincial semi-finals the same day, meaning a likely request for the game to be brought forward by 24 hours.

There is simply no downside to Garrycastle’s success, however, for Leinster final goalscorer Garry Dolan.

And he insisted that there’ll be no mixed emotions about facing his family members from just across the border in south Roscommon.

“There’ll be nothing mixed about it all – it will be fairly straightforward,” said Dolan. “There are going to be seven of us (from the same family) on the field so that’s going to be brilliant.

“We have great respect and time for the lads across the water. We would always be in contact with them. As the crow flies we are probably only a few miles away from each other. We are all good pals and it will be a mighty occasion.”

Dolan admitted that aside from being related to some of the opposing Brigid’s players, they know each other inside out anyway living so nearby.

“Every year we play them two or three times in challenges so yeah, we’d know each other well,” said the former Westmeath forward. “We’re neighbouring parishes. There’s only a lake splitting us.

“We have supported them the whole way up when they’ve been in big games but obviously we are not going to be supporting them the next day.”

Garrycastle’s win, courtesy of sub Conor Cosgrove’s late, late match winning free, helped erase some of the pain of defeat from the unsuccessful 2009 final. Dolan pointed out that the ‘hurt’ from ’09 was a priceless motivating factor.

“You have to have hurt in the GAA, if you don’t have hurt you are not going to overcome the biggest challenges,” he said.

“We felt we were the better team two years ago. It’s very hard to take when you lose a final and come off the field thinking, ‘if we only did a few things differently we could have taken them’. That definitely drove us on this time.”