With one of the top facilities in the county - if not the top - Templeport are a club which have very much been investing
in their future. Long-serving PRO Thomas Doonan knows this better than most and spoke about an unique year when
matters were better off the field than on it.  

April 30, 2010 - you can put it down as another landmark date for the progressive Templeport GAA club.
When club chairman Patsy Maguire turned on the new floodlights at St Aidan's Park for the first time over 500 people were in attendance to watch the All County Football League Division Three meeting between Templeport and Ballyconnell First Ulsters.
Among those in attendance were Ulster GAA Council President Aogan Farrell, Cavan county board chairman Tom O'Reilly and club men TD Brendan Smith and County Councillor Sean Smith, both of whom are club men.

Chairman of the club from 1998 to 2006, and Public Relations Officer ever since, Thomas Doonan has been involved in the development of the facilities in Bawnboy since the plans were first put in place in the early 2000s.
"We opened the pitch in 2005 with dressing rooms, stand and pitch and in 2007 we done up an area upstairs from the dressing rooms for a kitchen facility," he explained.
"Flood-lighting capped-off the final piece of the jigsaw. We probably do need a designated hard area for hard training during the winter, but it's not a necessity by any means. The cost of the lights were around 170,000 euro and we're down 30,000 or so from that."

It's little wonder why the club's facilities have won 'County Grounds of the Year' on three different occasions (2005, 2006 and 2009) and Thomas concurs that things are certainly moving in the right direction.
"Off the field we're more successful at the moment than on it," he admitted
"We've restructured the club to juvenile, ladies and seniors, but we're all still the one club and we find that things work better this way with monthly committee meetings being well attended."
At the start of 2010 Belcoo native Mickey Dolan was appointed as the club's new senior football manager, with local men Brian McKiernan and Jim McManus coming in as his selectors.

After a disappointing campaign in 2009, Thomas explained that the club "wanted to have progression from last year and get into the quarter-finals of the junior championship and also push for promotion in the league."
Things got off to a good start for the Bawnboy men. In their opening game they hosted intermediate outfit Ballymachugh - under the managership of now Cavan selector Stephen King - and sent them back east with a 3-7 to 1-5 defeat.
After that Dolan's charges made the trip to Crubany and battled hard for a draw which kept them on the upper end of the table heading into May when the club would mark another memorable occasion at St Aidan's

"We won our first game against Ballymachugh and then drew with Killygarry before getting into a bad run, unfortunately," said Thomas.
"We picked up a few points before the championship started and had we won two or three more games we would have been in the shake-up for promotion, but we ended up around mid-table."
The Round Four meeting of neighbours Templeport and Ballyconnell First Ulsters in the ACFL Division Three would serve to mark the official occasion of the official turning on of the lights at St Aidan's Park at half-time. Unfortunately, from the home side's perspective, their rivals would be successful in their bid to spoil the party as Templeport suffered their first home defeat of the season by 3-8 to 0-10 to their great rivals.

Further losses to Munterconnacht and Arva dented hopes of a push for promotion and but for Dolan's side making the long haul to Kingscourt worthwhile to take away a hard-earned 1-8 to 0-10 win from O'Raghallaigh Park they surely would have been out of sight.
The team's form on the road was proving more valuable than that as home, as they picked up four more points after visits to neighbours Corlough and Laragh, while visits to promotion hopefuls Shannon Gaels and Swanlinbar proved too much as their hopes of a place in the league semi-finals were well and truly quashed by mid-June.

Defeat to eventual promotion winners Cornafean and a win over bottom-placed Maghera brought drew the curtain on Templeport's league campaign as Dolan and his players quickly turned their attention towards the junior championship in July.
"We were drawn into a three-way group with Maghera and Sherock. We knew it was going to be though because Shercock were one of the favourites, but when they defeated Maghera in the first game it meant that we needed to beat Maghera in the next game to get through to the quarter-finals and, thankfully, we did," explained the PRO.

Despite losing out to Shercock, Templeport's second win over Maghera in three weeks (this time by a convincing margin of 2-14 to 0-8) sent them into the draw for the last eight where they picked fellow westerners Shannon Gaels out of the hat.
While many envisaged a straight-forward win for the Gaels here, having come through a group that contained big guns Swanlinbar and Munterconnacht along with fellow promotion winners Cornafean, but Templeport firmly put up the fight cometh the hour.

Only Nevin O'Donnell's seventh minute goal had separated the sides at half-time, as the Blacklion men went in at the interval with a 1-5 to 0-6 lead, as their opponents were well in touch thanks to the points of ace forwards Ciaran McManus and Sean Corrigan.
Templeport looked to up the ante after the restart but could only manage to stay within two points as Eamon O'Reilly and McManus swapped points and goalkeeper Daniel Shannon pulled off two brilliant saves from the lethal O'Donnell to deny the Blacklion side another goal.

However, the two resultant 45s were converted by O'Reilly and that ushered the Gaels into a four-point lead as Templeport could only respond with another free from O'Reilly which left them three short come the full-time whistle, handing them their exit from the championship.

Templeport (JFC v Shannon Gaels): Daniel Shannon; Joe McKiernan, Martin Baxter, Stephen Doonan; Martin Dolan, Lasse Morganroth, Martin Ball; Danny Ball, Donal Maguire; Seamus McAweeney (0-1), Killian Smith (0-1), Sean McGoldrick; Declan Farrell (0-1), Ciaran McManus (1-5), Sean Corrigan (0-1).  

Juniors make strides
Having had a mediocre run in their ACFL Reserve Division Three campaign, Templeport's juniors mounted a brave run to the last four of the Junior D Championship in September, when they were unlucky to be narrowly pipped to a place in the final against west Cavan rivals Shannon Gaels.

A hard fought win over Killygarry (1-9 to 1-8) sent the Bawnboy men into the semi-finals, where they met Arva in Drumlane. Both sides served up a cracker for those in attendance at O'Connell Park and in the end they couldn't be separated as it finished 2-8 apiece to force a replay.

The two teams fought it out again on September 19, this time in Ballyconnell, where an Arva goal would give the town side the upper hand come half-time. The westerners managed to pull back the deficit to just one point with 12 minutes to go, but another Arva surge saw them fall short on a narrow score-line of 1-9 to 0-10 to miss out on a place in the decider.     
Memorable year for McGovern

In 2010, long-time club servant Adrian McGovern was appointed as manager of the Cavan ladies football team.
The club were obviously delighted when the news was confirmed in January and McGovern went on to have good success with the team, which achieved promotion, captured the Division Three title and reached the All-Ireland IFC semi-final which they were unlucky to lose out to Waterford.

Templeport had three representatives on the team in Aisling Doonan, Sharon Cassidy and Karen Baxter.
Thomas confirmed: "This year was a major year for us with regards to the ladies scene, because Adrian McGovern, who was involved with out ladies team for 15 years, took over the Cavan ladies team.
"He had a great year with them, winning the league and reaching an All-Ireland intermediate semi-final and we wish him the best of luck for next year and hope that the team can go one better and reach the All-Ireland final."

With McGovern's departure from the club, chairman Patsy Maguire took over the reins as ladies manager this past season and helped the team maintain their senior status after making the leap up to the top tier in 2009.

In McGovern's absence, the ladies section of Templeport looks to be in undoubtedly safe hands as Maguire looks set to remain in charge for the foreseeable future as he is ably assisted by his selectors Thomas Doonan and Paddy Maguire, who has also been doing great work as chairman of the pitch committee, while the minor ladies are in the very capable hands of Thomas' daughter and Cavan star Aisling Doonan. Tweet

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