IT’S ONE OF those GAA transfers that would have caused major headlines at the time and many don’t realise how close it came to actually happening.
In fact, on two occasions during the 2000s former Roscommon forward Frankie Dolan nearly joined Westmeath, where he has strong links.
Shortly after departing Tommy Carr’s Rossies panel in 2005, he met with Páidí Ó Sé to discuss joining the reigning Leinster champions. Two years later, when Tomás Ó Flaharta was in charge, the move almost went though until a late complication.
The opportunity to line out alongside his cousins Dessie and Gary Dolan was a tempting one. Frankie was every bit as talented a forward as Dessie, who won an All-Star in 2004, and though they were close in age they last played together at U14 level in Athlone with a soccer club.
For a player who was involved in his fair share of controversies, accepting an approach to join Roscommon’s neighbours across the Shannon would have another turbulent moment.
Dolan led Roscommon to a famous Connacht title victory in 2001 and kicked 0-25 across two games during a qualifier run two years later, before he left the squad twice during the 2005 season.
Dolan initially walked off the panel during the spring after he found himself warming the bench for winless league games against Clare and Carlow.
“I remember going back for the fitness tests at the Hyde Centre at the start of the year and I probably would have been around November, early December,” he tells The42.
“I’d trained like a dog for three or four months actually it could have been more, and when we came back I was the second fittest in all the tests. I was in really, really good shape mentally and physically. When I wasn’t getting the chance to start in the league games, I wanted to be playing in them.
“I got no communication saying why I wasn’t playing in the first couple of league games. I wanted to be on the pitch, I didn’t want to be sitting on the bench. I just said that’s enough and I concentrated on the club after that.”
Manager Carr was axed by the county board a month later after a defeat to Monaghan.
A lethal forward, Dolan was recalled to the panel by Val Daly but his return was a short-lived one. After he came on as a late substitute in the Connacht semi-final defeat to Mayo, Dolan had verbals with a selector over the timing of his introduction.
He thought nothing of it but a phone call the following Monday from Daly saw the St Brigid’s man dropped for disciplinary reasons.
2005 could have gone a lot differently for Dolan had he decided to up sticks and join the Ó Sé revolution in Westmeath midway through the season. He’d gone to school in Athlone, played soccer, worked and socialised there, while his father, uncles and cousins all lined out for the county.
So it wasn’t a stretch for Dolan to see himself in the maroon and white.
“The first time I met Páidí was in 2005,” he says. “I was around 27 at the time so I was thinking I didn’t have an awful amount of time left at county level.”
He met with Ó Sé in a Kinnegad pub, as the former All-Ireland winning player and manager tucked into a plate of sandwiches.
They spoke about Westmeath’s historic run to the Leinster title a year earlier, of Dolan’s links to the county. and about his situation with Roscommon.
Writing in his new memoir Outside of the Right, Dolan described it as “one of the most enjoyable football chats I’ve ever had and an evening I’ll always remember.”
“We had a great chat and I was keen to do it,” he recalls now. “But after I met Páidí and I started thinking about it for a couple of days.”
Despite being flattered by the Kerry legend’s interest and after being torn for a couple of weeks, he turned down the move.
“I just didn’t want to go ahead with it. It was probably too raw after leaving the Roscommon panel. I didn’t want to be like a child throwing the toys out of the pram or whatever.
“So I just said I’d leave it, hold off. I didn’t regret that decision and I’ve said that a few times.”
After he was among five high profile names not called up to the Roscommon panel by new manager John Maughan in 2006, Dolan spent a couple of years in the inter-county wilderness during some of his prime years before he returned under the Mayo man in 2008.
But during that period, in 2007, he did have discussions with Ó Sé’s successor Ó Flaharta.
“The second year then when I met Tomás Ó Flaharta after Páidí moved on, that’s when I really wanted it to go through because I was another year out of county football.
“I didn’t seem like I was going to be getting called back into Roscommon. I was keen for it to go through, I met with Tomás and the county board. Everything seemed to be sound.
“Next thing I was told that I had to move club for it to happen and I wasn’t going moving club again.”
Earlier in the decade he’d already transferred from St Brigid’s to Ballymahon in Longford, where his uncle Dessie Dolan Snr was manager. Over two successful years, they delivered the club’s first senior county title and won the league.
Dolan returned to his native club in 2003 and by 2007 he sensed a special group of players were emerging in Kiltoom and he was unwilling to leave them again.
“Thats how close it came, I was ready to go and Tomas was keen for me to go on board. I was chatting to a few of the players back then as well, id know a lot of them. A lot of the Westmeath lads I would have went to school with them and played soccer with them.
“So were hoping for it to happen but it looked like I had to change club and I wasn’t willing to do that. So that’s why that didn’t didn’t happen in the second year.”
The only way for Dolan to join without changing clubs was to declare Westmeath as his native county, which he was unwilling to do.
“…the thought of it was worse than leaving Kiltoom,” he wrote. “basically, I would have to state on record that I regarded myself as a Westmeath man rather than a Roscommon one. That was never going to happen.
“I loved nothing more than pulling on that primrose and blue jersey and representing Roscommon.”
Reflecting now, Dolan adds: “I was born and raised in Roscommon. I could have done it but I wouldn’t have been comfortable with it.
“I went to school in Westmeath and the whole lot but at the end of the day I made my debut with Roscommon, I grew up there and still live there so to declare myself a Westmeath man, I could have done it but it wouldn’t have sat right with me.
“I don’t know if the Roscommon supporters would have been too happy if I went down that route. So I didn’t go ahead with it. I wasn’t changing club either so that’s the way it was and unfortunately the move didn’t happen.”
The decision to stick with St Brigid’s proved a wise one and he finished up his club career with 10 Roscommon SFC titles, four Connachts and an All-Ireland medal.
He feared declaring himself as a Wesmeath man might have tarnished his relationship with the Roscommon supporters.
However, there are lingering regrets that he missed out on three of his peak years on the inter-county stage. Dolan wrote that Maughan considered him too old for inter-county football at 28. He was finally recalled in 2008, a season that proved to be his swan-song with Roscommon.
“I was hoping it was going to happen because I was a couple of years out of inter-county football so that’s a long time when you’re coming into your late 20s. I went back the following year after that, I wasn’t expecting to go back to Roscommon.
“You could say I was over three years out of the game because 2005 was more or less a write-off with Roscommon with me. I pulled out of the squad with Tommy Carr so I missed out on 2005, 2006 and 2007. I was called back in then in 2008 so I’d three years out of inter-county.
“I know I was playing club but that’s a lot of training at a high level missed. I said I went back in unfit – I went back in but I wasn’t expecting to go back in playing inter-county football. Three years out of that, it would have taken a number of months to get back up to the level required.
“I wouldn’t say I was unfit but I probably wasn’t in the shape I should have been for county football, but I was three years out of it. That’s a long, long time. I went back in and got playing the matches and the whole lot.
“That was grand but naturally enough I would have been a lot fitter if I was playing inter-county football over the three years.”
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