Dolan not inclined to rest on her laurels

By John Harrington

Tomorrow’s Camogie Division 1A League clash between Galway and Cork evokes memories of last year’s classic All-Ireland Final, but Carrie Dolan isn’t inclined towards nostalgia.

The Galway captain scored a remarkable winner in that match yet sees little merit in dwelling on the past.

Instead she’s fully focused on the challenges of the present as Galway bid to finish an inconsistent League campaign on a high.

“Obviously any time you win big games like that, especially in finals, they're obviously going to be special but we're definitely putting it behind us now.

“They’re memories that we'll look back on in years to come but it's a new year now and we have probably been up and down, a bit inconsistent, so we need to have our eyes facing forward and that starts with Cork this weekend.

“When we look back on the last few games we've had an awful lot of possession in the four matches we’ve played but it's what we're doing with the ball, we're giving it away.

“That's, I suppose, rustiness. We all know the game now, you have to retain possession. If you give it away, you're going to be punished.

“It's something that we need to look at going forward because possession is vital. You can even see it now with the way teams are setting up and even puck-outs, trying to retain possession is vital first and foremost.

“That's the most important thing and then when you have it, when you win the ball, it's all about holding on to it and doing the right things on it because you give away the ball and you'll be punished in a second.”

Galway’s inconsistency is surely down in some part to the fact that there has been a significant churn in their panel since last year and they’ve used the League as an opportunity to try new faces and combinations.

“We've had a good few girls, yeah, that have stepped away for different reasons, and another couple that are probably still up in the air, not too sure," says Dolan.

“But I suppose no different to any other county, that's the same case all around the country. But we've a lot of good girls there that are well good enough to be on the team and on the panel.

“Sometimes it might be when you're after winning something or maybe when you're after coming really close and losing, you might have a couple of players that might go their different ways. But that's the nature of sport, and I suppose it's always a competitive county.

“You're always going to have young girls coming through. The girls that are joining our panel now, they're ready. Their skill level is unbelievable. It's probably the physical side of it now that they have to catch up on that maybe wasn't there 10 years ago.

“But skill-wise and mentality, they're well ahead of where we were when we were that age.”

Last year’s All-Ireland Final was arguably a new high-water mark for Camogie in terms of the standard of the game on the biggest day, and Dolan thinks the game as a spectacle is only going to get better and better in the coming years.

“The new players that are coming in at the grassroots, they're obviously being coached really well," she says.

“When they get up to that senior level, they're ahead to where they probably should be and that's feeding into it. Last year's final was great, the 2024 final was great, and hopefully it stays getting better and better as the years go on. I suppose that's down to the officials as well.

“The physicality has come into it an awful lot and it's only making the game better. I enjoy that and I know from the girls in Galway they really enjoy it because we're not killing ourselves two evenings in the gym during the week to go out and be pulled for the lack of physicality.

"It only makes the game better, it's more interesting to watch and we're really enjoying playing the game at that kind of a level.”