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Hurling

hurling

Four Roads still putting Roscommon hurling on the map

Four Roads celebrate their last Roscommon SHC Final success in 2015. 

Four Roads celebrate their last Roscommon SHC Final success in 2015. 

By John Harrington

Four Roads player-manager Andrew Lawlor is only half joking when he says he won’t be able to show his face around home for a few weeks if they lose the Roscommon SHC Final against Athleague on Sunday.

In Four Roads, hurling is everything, and winning the County SHC Final is an annual expectation rather than aspiration.

They won eight of them in a row from 2008 to 2015 but haven’t lifted the Cup since, which is regarded as nothing short of a mini-disaster.

"Well, sure, look, after losing the last two Finals it's nearly like a famine at this stage,” Lawlor told GAA.ie

“We had great success winning eight in a row, but we've lost the last two so we're mad to get over the line now again and get the Cup back to Four Roads again.”

Four Roads, as its name suggests, is a village located on a cross-roads near the Galway border and around 16km from Roscommon town.

There’s a football club, St. Aidan’s, in the parish too, but hurling has always been king of the crossroads.

“There's big tradition here, said Lawlor. “The Four Roads part of the parish is all basically hurling going back 100 years to 1904 or something like that when the club was founded. It goes back a long way.

“Every lad from the age of two or three is hurling. That's all I can remember as a young lad, hurling, going to matches with the auld lad, the same as anyone in Kilkenny, Cork, or Galway.

“That's all we were interested in growing up, hurling.”

The club’s most famous day came in 1988 when they defeated Galway champions Abbeyknockmoy in the Connacht SHC club final to qualify for the All-Ireland semi-final.

The Four Roads U-13 hurlers of Roscommon celebrate after beating Longford Slashers in the 2019 Táin Óg Final.

The Four Roads U-13 hurlers of Roscommon celebrate after beating Longford Slashers in the 2019 Táin Óg Final.

Their underage teams compete regularly against Galway teams and more than hold their own when they do.

“Galway would be a big influence,” said Lawlor. “Half the parish is sort of in Galway, the Ballyforan side of the parish, there's a good bit of it in Galway once you go over the bridge.

“Our underage teams, the U-12s, U-14s, and U-16s would play in the Galway leagues. We're not allowed play in their championship, which is a shame.

“The six or seven hurling clubs in Roscommon should probably be allowed to play all their underage championship in Galway to promote the game and playing more hurling, but unfortunately that can't really happen.

“We'd be very competitive against the Galway teams at underage. We won the Connacht U-16 last year, beat Kilnadeema-Leitrim in the final of it, and beat them fairly well.

“And we'd be hoping to win that Connacht U-16 title again this year, our U-16s are playing in the Roscommon County Final this weekend.”

The conveyor belt of talent in the club suggests the future is bright for Four Roads, but for now they’re just worried about the present.

It would be almost unthinkable to lose a third county final in a row, but Lawlor knows they’ll get nothing easy on Sunday against an Athleague team determined to end a much longer wait for glory.

“It doesn't matter what you do all year, if you don't win the county final then the year is a disaster, that's just the way we'd look on it,” said Lawlor.

“The last two years, I don't know why we didn't win it, we just weren't right. We had a lot of injuries last year and the year before I think we got caught out.

“Didn't play well, that was it. Didn't deserve to win it or anything. Hopefully this year we'll go alright, we've been hurling fairly well all year.

“Hopefully if we perform well we should get over the line but you just don't know, Athleague are a good team.

“They haven't lost a game all year and will be hungry as well because they haven't won one since 2007.

“We know it's going to be a serious battle. If they get a run on us they'll be very hard to stop.”