The Kingdom’s North Mayo Missionary
The late Pat Dowling (right), who was a proud native of Lixnaw in Co Kerry, with his son Cormac.
As Mayo football rightly fans “go nuts” this week and the county paints itself green and red, my mind – and I’m sure the minds of many friends, neighbours, and old clubmates – is drawn to memories of an adopted North Mayo Kerryman who would have been in his element during this build-up. He would have happily fielded yards of good-natured local abuse all week, proudly defending his birth-tribe at every turn.
The man in question was my father, Pat Dowling, who passed away in 2022. To the GAA community, he was a former Moygownagh GAA player and coach, an Ardmoy manager, a referee, a board administrator, and a school principal. But above all, he was a fiercely proud Kerryman. Moving to Mayo in the mid 1970s he claimed his decision to head to the banks of the Moy was to join his brother Willie, then a teacher at Moyne College, on a mission to “spread the good word of football to the heathens of Mayo.” And true to his word he threw himself headfirst into the rich sporting fabric of the region, firstly as a player with Moygownagh.
Like a prophet leading his flock to the holy mountain he quickly set about arranging pilgrimages to the Kingdom for his Moygownagh team. Long before professional training camps became standard practice, his annual coachloads of Moygownagh footballers travelled down to his native Kerry for challenge matches, and I guess today would be called team-bonding sessions!
Those trips spawned legendary tales, local folklore, and even poetic tributes. One line from a poem written by Pat on those voyages has always stuck in my mind, humorously recounting an almighty on-field collision between his friend Tommy Paul Heffron and a giant local Kerryman:
Anyone who lined out for the underage Ardmoy teams from the turn of the millennium onward will well remember being bundled into the back of Pat's Ford Escort estate, ferried to pitches across the county. As a coach he drove us all on with an unyielding belief that would culminate in one of his proudest days on a sideline: guiding Ardmoy to an Under-17 ‘B’ county title, bravely outlasting Ballinrobe in the final amidst a relentless monsoon in Charlestown. The match report headline from this newspaper read: “River of joy for Moy men marvels”.
During his years refereeing underage fixtures in Mayo, he would regularly tip up young players for stardom over the dinner table. But there was one specific crop he spoke about with a genuine, boyish excitement – the exceptional young talent emerging in Crossmolina at the turn of this decade.
Names like Flynn, McGuinness, Keane and McDonald dominated his match reports to me. Those surnames reminded me of the golden era we spent travelling the country together to watch the iconic, All-Ireland-winning Crossmolina Deel Rovers team of the early 2000s. He assured me that what was coming next was going to be every bit as special. Many of those young stars were likely first introduced to the game by Pat’s great friend and Crossmolina stalwart John Cosgrove, who passed away recently, leaving an equally indelible mark on his own club and community.
In my current surroundings of Dunshaughlin in County Meath, where Mayo expats are numerous, the ghosts of that legendary Crossmolina team still loom remarkably large. It was Dunshaughlin that Crossmolina defeated in the 2003 All-Ireland senior club semi-final. To this day, locals talk about the influence of Ciaran McDonald on that fateful afternoon. They speak of the loss with the same tone that characterised Mayo’s recent championship win over Meath, musing over “what might have been” had a crucial sending off not swung the momentum (some appearing to conveniently forget events of 1996).
I am writing these words from Meath now, still playing for my local Dunshaughlin and Royal Gaels club, coaching underage teams and attempting to carry some of the same values my father instilled in me from the back of that Ford Escort and the playing fields of North Mayo.
After more than 40 years of quiet, understated service to the development of grassroots football in North Mayo, I have no doubt about the compounding impact his efforts, and those of people like John Cosgrove have had in North Mayo continuing to be such fertile ground for footballing talent.
And despite his unwavering, lifelong fealty to the green and gold tribe of his birth, if this youthful Mayo team finally shatters decades of cursed luck on Sunday, spearheaded by the exuberance of young Kobe McDonald, the old schoolmaster from Lixnaw will be looking down from the sky terrace with a grin of quiet fulfilment for a mission accomplished.
