Frankie Dolan – Roscommon
“I suppose in Frankie’s case he was a sort of misread soul and sometimes that happens with players. He started off as a young player with a very big reputation and he played very well for Roscommon.”
“He won a Connacht championship in 2001 and things went of the rails a bit in 2002 but he came back in 2003 and had it been a Dublin player or Cork player or Kerry player or one of those highlighted counties, a more flamboyant county in GAA terms and there’s no way he wouldn’t have got an AllStar.
“He kicked 25 points in two games, and was the stand out performer that year, one could have said footballer of the year wouldn’t have been too far off he was that good for us.
“I suppose there is this caricature of him that he’s a maverick and he’s mad, but while all those things he maybe is, he’s also a supremely talented player and I suppose he finally got the vindication in 2013 when he gave a sublime performance for us in the club final.”
Padraig Joyce – Galway
“Another Connacht man but he did it at the highest level aswell. I was fortunate enough to have played against Padraig at county level and at club level on numerous occasions.
“I also played with him for Connacht for a number of years, and you see the two edges of the man, just a brilliant footballer and I think in the decade of the 90s which I came up in there weren’t many up there with him.
“I think he’s up there with the greatest players that have ever graced the games, maybe with certain decades or eras it’s difficult to compare but he’s up there with the best anyway.”
Peter Canavan – Tyrone
“We played against Tyrone in a lot of league games, but my first memory of him was in an U21 game we played in Donegal back in 92′, we were both on opposite ends of field as I was full forward for Roscommon and he was full forward for Tyrone.
“He gave just an awesome display, and I think that probably over the last 20 years he is marginally the best player I have ever seen, certainly in a forward position over the last 20 years.”
“The ‘Gooch’ is obviously a top class player but I think Canavan just had everything, and I don’t think Tyrone would have got to where they did without him.
“He had both feet, a great heart and a great understanding of the game. It’s only when you look back on the things he did in the games when you played against him; he was a great, great player.”
Colm Cooper – Kerry
“I played against him numerous times, particularly in the All-Ireland quarter final, in just his second season, just after starting out.
“We played against them in the league games too and challenges and his skills were just sublime, he was probably one of those players that could just glide over the field and he made it look easy.
“Again he could play of right and left foot and he just made it look very easy like all the great players I’ve mentioned.”
“You never knew what he was going to do when he had the ball in his hands, whether he was going to turn in, turn out, ship left, ship right and there are enough superlatives about his skills that you could fill a book on him.
“His injury this year robbed Kerry of their talisman but I’m sure he was there at every session which is the mark of the great players sometimes, though they’re not involved themselves they see the wood from the tress and they can lend a hand in other ways.
“We’ve missed each other in the club scene, we missed them for some reason, but I think we’re scheduled to play the Munster winners if we come out this year.”
Jason Sherlock – Dublin
“Our career paths changed a lot, I would have faced him a lot actually when I was playing for Athlone Town and he was playing for UCD (League of Ireland) and he was just a great player.
“At that time there was talk of him going to England – but he was just so fast, but also his speed of though. As with all the great players they can think so much faster about the next move in a game, almost like a chess player or snooker player thinking five or six moves ahead.
“We played Dublin in 2004 and we played Dublin in a lot of league games from 2000 to 2004/5 because Roscommon were in Division 1 at the time.
“We played them in the last 16 in Croke park one year and he scored a goal that day and I thought I did everything correctly, technically as a goalkeeper to close down the angle – but suddenly the ball is past you before you know it with a sublime finish and it just gave you no chance.
“I suppose he’s been unlucky in a lot of ways – he exploded onto the scene in 95′ and flittered maybe around between the League of Ireland and the Dublin football team for a number of years then without perhaps the success that he deserved.
“But he certainly was for a me a superb player and a great lad off the pitch too – as they all are.”
eamondon / SoundCloud
Cake by Shane Curran is published by Penguin Ireland. More information can be found here.
