Dessie Dolan reveals his vile hate mail hell

Former Westmeath attacker Dessie Dolan has admitted he received vile hate mail after an infamous free-kick miss against Meath in the 2003 Championship.

The ex-AllStar and Sunday Game pundit booted a routine 20 metre free agonisingly wide, allowing old rivals Meath to escape with a draw and win the replay. Dolan bounced back with the most successful year of his career in 2004 but admitted he’s never lived down that Meath miss.

“It wasn’t easy to deal with it, it was tough,” said Dolan on the Balls.ie Hard Shoulder podcast. “It meant an awful lot to an awful lot of people to beat Meath and I’d had the ideal opportunity to do it. So I was receiving things like hate mail. I was only 22 or 23.

“My parents were trying to safeguard me against different things. It wasn’t nice. But how do you deal with that? How do you deal with something like that when you’re young? I had psychologists ringing me but here you are, just a footballer, trying to deal with a big miss like that. Did it hurt, yeah? It’s not something I’d be proud of either. It still follows me around. For all the good stuff that you’d do, there is still people (that mention it).

“Like, I went to Boston that summer, I just said I need to get out of town, it’s the only option, get out of this country. First free-kick out there, ‘Come on the Royals!’”