As a player, team mentor and officer, Paddy Dolan, who was Ratoath's Sean Gael recipient this year, has given Ratoath GAA club a lifetime of distinguished service. Here the current club treasurer talks to Royal County about days past and his ambitions for the future of the club. A glance through the history of Ratoath GAA club reveals that, surprisingly, hurling was the numero uno sport in the Dublin border club for quite a number of decades after its inception in 1902. Three junior hurling (1939, '31 and '40) and one senior hurling league (1912) titles were annexed before football was even introduced to the club in the fifties. Times have changed since though, and now football, such is the case in many of the clubs in the Royal County, commands the majority of attention amongst Ratoath's members. There are exceptions however, and one such individual is current club treasurer Paddy Dolan who was captain of the Ratoath team which garnered junior championship honours in 1956. Paddy lined out at right corner back in the decider against Batterstown. As a juvenile, Paddy first started playing hurling with Ratoath in 1938. He narrowly missed out on the senior championship success of 1964 having hung up his boots two years previously but he was chairman of the club in the year the Jubilee Cup made its one and only visit. "We beat Dunboyne in the decider," recalled the affable Dolan. "They led for the majority of the game but we finished strongly in the last five minutes to just pip them at the post. "Unfortunately hurling is not as popular within the club as it used to be but we're keeping the flag flying all the same. We won the Junior Division 2 last year which was a great morale booster. "We've a couple of good young lads coming up from the underage teams so hopefully it won't be too long before we've more championship success to celebrate." Kilmessan proved to be the rock on which Ratoath's hurling aspirations perished in August of the year just coming to an end. Along with club chairman Mickey Barron, Paddy has been involved in the management of Ratoath's premier hurling XV these past number of years. The footballers, meanwhile, qualified for the quarter-final stages as runners-up to Dunboyne's seconds from a group which contained the second strings of Skryne, Simonstown and O'Mahony's as well as St Vincent's. Unfortunately, however, St Ultan's extinguished any hopes they harboured of gaining outright success. "The footballers did reasonably well this year," remarked Paddy who was a member of the Ratoath panel which scooped the Meath JFC crown in 1961. "As I've said earlier we have a very good batch of youngsters coming up from underage in both codes so I would have to say that I'm very confident about the future. "The men and women who are involved in looking after the underage teams within the club are doing a great job. Often these people don't get the praise they deserve for their efforts." He continued: "The one thing we have a problem with at the moment is a lack of pitches. Between underage and adult, hurling and football, we field quite a number of teams but there isn't the space at the moment for all the teams." Paddy, whose son Paul lines out with the club's hurlers, hastens to add that this is a problem which the Executive Committee of Ratoath GAA club are in the process of solving. Five years ago the club purchased 27 acres of land and development work on a new pitch is nearing its completion. "Paling around the new field is the next big job. We haven't been able to play on the pitch yet but it should be ready in time for this year. Danny McCann looks after the pitch and is doing a great job." Plans are also in the pipeline for a clubhouse in the near future so it's quite clearly a demanding time to be treasurer of Ratoath. But Paddy, who has occupied the position of treasurer on numerous occasions during his sixty-plus year involvement with the Meath/Dublin border club, says that the club are fortunate to have a plentiful supply of people willing to help out on the fundraising front. "We're lucky to have a good lot of fundraising workers. For example, this year we held a golf classic in the Black Bush club in Dunshaughlin which raised in the region of ten to twelve thousand pounds. Gerry Byrne and Johnny Ryan were the two main organisers of that event and both deserve tremendous credit for the great job they did. The golf classic was a great success." Another cause for optimism regarding Ratoath's future stems from the population explosion which the village and its surrounding environs has experienced as a result of the building boom. The more houses, the more potential footballers and hurlers likely to find their way to Ratoath GAA club. "There has been a serious amount of houses constructed in the area these last number of years and that has to be good news for the club. Just the other night we had approximately seventy U10s up in the field training," said Paddy who has been running his own butchers shop in Ratoath village since 1950. "That's a great sign although it will be a few years before we see the benefit of the increase in numbers at adult level. There's also the competition from other sports, such as soccer which is very strong in the village. "But I've no hesitation in saying that if everyone can keep pulling together in Ratoath that we will be very hard to stop." On a sad note, the passing of Ratoath GAA stalwarts Andy Eiffe, Tommy Dolan, Paddy's brother and Tom Wheeler, during 2000 cast a dark shadow over the club. Andy was a past chairman of the club while Tommy served as secretary for quite a number of years. Ratoath GAA will find it impossible to replace men of that calibre. Tweet

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