*Paul Dillon speaking to Seamus Hayes. Photograph: John Mangan
THE DILLON name is well known in Doonbeg football and Paul is one of three brothers currently promoting the game in schools across the county.
All three are second level teachers, Paul is based at St Joseph’s Spanish Point, Brian is a member of the teaching staff at CBS Ennistymon while Colm teaches at St Flannan’s College.
“This is my seventh year teaching here and it’s our first year getting to an All-Ireland final. It’s great. You start the year and you hope to get a few wins to build a bit of momentum. We must keep the heads down now and try and get over the line”, Paul said this week.
Noting that Brian is a mentor with CBS Ennistymon, he admitted that “we bump into each other a bit more often. There is a good rivalry between the schools and it’s great that the two schools are competitive. Ennistymon had a great year last year winning two Munster finals (hurling and football) and getting to the All-Ireland finals. It has to benefit West Clare.
“A lot of hard work is being done by the clubs as well. Ennistymon’s senior team contested the county final last year. Kilmurry, Miltown, my own club Doonbeg, Cooraclare, they are all traditional strongholds. We get the boys at secondary school level but it’s the coaching they have received up along that stands to them”.
Commenting on the timing of the club competitions, he said “you do have the period where there is an overlap of games. A lot of players had a lot of games and you learn so much from games and that probably fed into our schedule. We had a couple of close games in the last couple of weeks and we managed to come through”.
He said, “There is always going to be a certain element of nerves in any big final. We are lucky in one sense in that a lot of our adult players played football at adult level last year and they gained Cusack Cup experience and senior championship experience and a lot of them have come through the ranks at underage but at the end of the day it’s just another game of football and we will try and grill that into the boys and once the ball is thrown in that will be forgotten about and you have a game of football to play. It will be for myself, Sean and Paul to try and get them into the right frame of mind”.
Paul believes that “a lot of work is being done by the clubs in football and hurling and they have moved forward in regard to the type of training that players are doing and the preparation they are putting in. The structures have definitely improved in Clare football. Ennistymon CBS winning Munster last year and getting to the All-Ireland final gives that bit of profile for the schools in the football area. Spanish Point getting to the All-Ireland final will, hopefully do something similar. Hopefully the younger students in the school will see that getting to the All-Ireland final is achievable”.
He went on to say that while getting to the All-Ireland final is great “we do need to keep the boys on the straight and narrow and make sure that they go to classes. All of our training has been done outside of school time. Over the winter we trained first thing in the mornings and had the boys back in school in time for classes”.
Dillon concluded, “we have the senior A colleges in Clare and we have the Munster title. For us it’s one more step we have to take. If we can take that, we can then plan ahead”.
