‘Without everyone working together there will be no success’

Meath camogie to get campaign underway with tough test away to Laois

During her 16 years in inter-county camogie Jane Dolan experienced all sorts of trials and tribulations as well as triumphs. There were some invaluable lessons picked up along the way too. Lessons that relate to sport, work, life, writes Jimmy Geoghegan.

Take for instance the lessons the Batterstown woman absorbed about the importance of team work; the powerful momentum that can be whipped up by a group of people embarking on the same journey with the same destination in mind.

"One hundred percent there is a general mindset, a connection between sport and work. Sport has taught me so much about all that," she says before pushing on to outline what she means, exactly.

"Playing for Meath over the years we've had plenty of experience of losing games and your attitude around all that definitely transfers over to work and how you behave in a team. It shows you the importance of bouncing back from setbacks and moving on from there.

"It was only as I got older I fully realised the importance of how you need to work as a team. How the whole team, in whatever context, needs to be working together to win the big games, to achieve the big goals, to be successful.

"The importance of team work especially can be seen at senior inter-county level where you are dealing with people from different clubs, dealing with people with different personalities. Without everyone working together there will be no success, no objective achieved.

"In sport, as in life, there are always setbacks, it's about being able to deal with them. We've had plenty of ups and downs playing for Meath camogie but I think it all has helped in relation to my working life in general, recovering from the setbacks but appreciating when things go well also," added Dolan who is married to Dario and who these days live in Kilmessan.

This year promises to be an interesting one for Dolan. Different. For starters she won't be playing any camogie for club or county and if there's one name that has become synonymous with Meath camogie it is hers.

A Meath team without J Dolan pencilled in is like Christmas without Santa Claus or summer without any flowers in bloom but everything changes. The world moves on.

After years striving at club and inter-county level the Blackhall Gaels player has, at 34, called time on a career that yielded a plethora of bitter setbacks - but some rich pickings too.

There was, for instance, her success in winning All-Ireland Premier Junior crown (2012) and Intermediate title (2017) in her county's colours. There was also the 'Soaring Star Awards', camogie's equivalent to the Oscars. She was nominated for "seven or eight" of them no less.

She won six; that noteworthy haul an indication of her wide range of skills in the game she opted to focus on, although there were other alternatives. She could have, for instance, chosen Gaelic football as her number one choice. She was good enough to get on the Meath team for a while but opted to focus on the small ball game instead.

There was something about camogie she loved but now after two decades of playing the game she has decided to call a halt. For the first time just about anyone can remember she will NOT be wearing the colours of her club or county in the playing fields of Meath and beyond this year. She may return for the club scene sometime in the future, maybe. The inter-county part of her life is over.

She says she had some great days playing for Meath; made some great friends. Friends she hopes she'll always have. Had great laughs too. That dressingroom banter will, she admits, be hard to replace. Now, however, it's simply time to move on.

"I'm taking a year out, not playing any GAA. I was probably 20 years or more playing, between club and county, underage and senior, every single year. I owe it to myself to take a rest, I need and want a break," she added.

"There were a few players the same age as me on the team which made me feel I wasn't the auld one on the team but there is a younger generation coming through and there is a point where you have to step aside and let the younger girls step up."

TRIATHLON

The definition of phrases such as "taking a year out" or "having a rest" have clearly different connotation for Jane Dolan than it would have for most.

While she will be putting aside the caman and the sliotar she has taken up another baton. She has decided to try her hand this year as an triathlete and is currently engaged in putting herself through the rigours of training for a triathlon in a few months time.

She is engaged in that pursuit with friend Maire Keogh, another great Meath camogie player of recent times who has also decided to take another route.

"Maire and myself are doing a race together in Majorca and it's great for me to have her with me working towards that goal as well as my brother Robert, he's joining us so I have that comraderie with them."

Part of the attraction of this venture for Dolan, you suspect, is the fact that after years of striving to achieve something as a team she is taking on a sporting venture which is essentially a personal, individual pursuit.

You also wonder if taking on the triathlon is Dolan's way of satisfying her fiercely competitive nature where there are obstacles to be overcome; mountains to be climbed. Literally.

"Maybe it's just that I need to be competitive with myself, to take on a challenge. I have a coach (Killian Moffett) and he tells me what I should be doing.

"I love progressing in my fitness and I can see now after a couple of months of training how the different fitness levels are coming on. I track everything with my watch. I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to the statistic behind sport, that's probably half of it as well."

"I was like that in camogie. I used to love keeping a watch on my stats. For a couple of years we used to get stats back on what we did during a game. We would wear the trackers playing games and we'd have a statistics guy who would see how many tackles I made, how many hooks or blocks I executed, what I scored.

"I think that's so important nowadays, especially the way things have gone, to be able to actually show on paper what you did right and what you did wrong and how you could better yourself. That's the only way.

"You can be told you had a great game but, in reality, the stats might show you did not have a great game. Vice vearsa you might feel you had an awful game but the stats might show you had the game of your life, yet still not be on the winning team."

A chartered surveyor by profession Jane Dolan plays a role these days in developing apartment complexes. It's a job she clearly enjoys. A job she finds challenging where her competitive spirit, that drive to push herself on, is tested. Everyday.

Regrets? Not really she insists although, well, maybe there's a tinge of regret in the fact she never took a year out and travelled around the world. Just a tinge. Camogie always seemed to be calling. She was happy to answer that call, enjoyed it all, but she wonders.

Through her life in camogie the importance of being part of a team and in giving advice to youngsters wishing to carve out a career in whatever sport they wish to pursue, she has one piece of worthwhile advice.

"Try to improve all the time because to get into a county set-up you need to just practice, practice, practice and stick at it, you can't train enough, have the hurl and sliotar in your hands everyday is the only way you are going to get your skills up. You have to keep at it."

Advice from someone who has certainly been there, done that. Someone who has learned a thing or two about life and sport and how they are closely related.