Victory should be no tall order for brilliant Blues

There is a photograph towards the back of Tooreen Hurling Club’s 60th anniversary book that shows the Tooreen team who won the 2014 county minor league. Standing tallest of all the players is the goalkeeper, Bobby Douglas, despite that he is also the goalkeeper in the photograph below it, the U16 team that won that same year’s Connacht championship. Bobby remains and has always been a towering figure.

Indeed there’s another photograph on an earlier page of a Tooreen team from 2005 who too won a Connacht U16 title, and stood as mascot at the side of dad Mick, the team’s selector, is young Bobby, hurl by his side.

It’s a team that featured Michael Morley, Kenny Feeney and Cathal Freeman. 21 years later and all three will join with Douglas next Saturday in trying to provide Tooreen its greatest day yet.

Tooreen have rarely allowed players to slip into obscurity – the parish simply hasn’t the sort of numbers where they could ever afford to – and so it is that if the Blue and White were to pull off a victory in the AIB All-Ireland Club intermediate hurling championship final, it will surely rank as one of the greatest achievements in the history of Mayo GAA. Or in spite of Mayo GAA, as some would say.

“If you could throw the ball in I’d play now. Sometimes the week before a game is the longest week you’ll ever do,” said Douglas at last Sunday’s get together of players and supporters in Tooreen Hall. It was easier to count who from the village wasn’t there as opposed to who was.

“There’s a great buzz about the place. Any time your club gets to an All-Ireland final it’s really enjoyable. Thankfully we’ve had the experience of being there already so it’s a bit less nervy. There’s more excitement than nerves,” added the goalkeeper.

He has only conceded four goals in Tooreen’s seven championship matches this season, with no clean sheet perhaps as important as that in the county final when the Blue Devils edged out Ballyhaunis by 2-17 to 0-21. It remains the tightest match of the campaign they’ve had.

“Coming back this season we knew it was a massive opportunity for us, to have a right go at it. It’s well documented we just about got over our county final but we built from there and kicked on as best we could,” says Douglas who explained that collective disappointment over results in the previous two seasons was turned into fuel for this current run.

Having lost to Monaleen of Limerick in the 2023 All-Ireland final, Tooreen ended that year with another equally narrow loss, this time to Castlelyons of Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final, while in 2024 they surrendered their Connacht title to Abbey-Duniry in a provincial final that saw them badly hindered by a first-half injury to attacking jewel Fergal Boland.

“Last year we felt we took another step back and were massively disappointed. We got beat by a good team in Tynagh but still, we let ourselves down on the day. We didn’t play well. We were not as well set up because of injuries and different things, which didn’t help us, but we still only lost by two points. We started really well and let the game get away from us.” 

But Bobby Douglas and his teammates are now right back where they have always wanted to be.

“I’d never see this as pressure. It’s an absolute privilege to play in an All-Ireland final, to represent your club, and to get an opportunity to do it again, with the same lads, we’re just enjoying it, embracing what’s to come. We know a bit better what to expect in the lead up to it as well.

“The last time, it was more nervy, cagey,” he admits. “You didn’t know what way to approach Christmas then, nobody knew, the management or the players. We didn’t know if we were doing too much, you were feeling guilty for going out on Christmas Eve, but this year it was left up to lads’ discretion.

“There’s enough lads there who have played for long enough to know their own bodies and there’ll be plenty more Christmases so this has been just the same as the lead in to any other game really,” insists Douglas.

“We’ve played in plenty of Connacht finals, All-Ireland semi-finals and a final, so it’s just another game that we have to prepare properly for as a team.” 

Bobby Douglas was the goalkeeper when Mayo beat Tyrone to lift the Nickey Rackard Cup at Croke Park in 2021 but has since suffered the disappointment of losing the 2024 and ’25 finals there, not to mention his club’s own reversal in 2023. So if there is any advantage that Tooreen have over their Tipperary opponents Upperchurch-Drombane in having had so many of their players appear at GAA headquarters on multiple occasions, Douglas believes it is minimal.

“Sometimes the novelty of being there for the first time… for them, it’s a massive opportunity as well. They’ve come through a seriously tough side of the draw. They’re from a traditional hurling county, they’ve beaten teams from all traditional hurling counties, Cork, Clare and Kilkenny, while Mayo still isn’t seen as a hurling county. But that suits us fine.

“I think it’s fairly even. Everyone will frame it whatever way they want. It’s just how you apply yourself in the week leading up to it. And on the day then, at this level whoever works the hardest will generally come out on the right side.

“We have a great benefit in that all fifteen of our starters have probably played with Mayo at some stage, so you’re playing with these lads all year round. We’ve played a lot of big games together, we’ve discussed where things have gone wrong.

“In that Tynagh game we felt we lumped the ball down the field a bit too much at the finish, we panicked a bit too early. It was only a two point game yet we were trying to get goals probably too early on and didn’t back ourselves the way we should have.” 

There’s more composure and maturity to how Tooreen have played this season. And a fierce belief too. Mix it all together on Saturday and there’s no reason why they and Douglas won’t be standing tallest of all, on the greatest stage of all.