Shane Curran planted a big kiss on the lips of his team-mate Frankie Dolan after the pair helped their beloved St Brigid’s to All-Ireland club glory at Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day 2013.
The big goalkeeper and the diminutive forward were two of the driving forces behind that historic win over Ballymun Kickhams, the hot favourites from Dublin.
On Sunday there’ll be no locking lips however, with the pair in opposite dressing rooms in the Roscommon Senior Football Championship final.
Dolan is player-manager with Brigid’s, with the Kiltoom side eager to win back the crown and have another crack at Connacht and All-Ireland glory.
Curran is in charge of their neighbours from outside Ballinasloe, Padraig Pearses, who are in their third final in five years having never lifted the cup before in their history.
Goalkeeper supremo Shane Curran and match winner Frankie Dolan celebrate @StBrigidsRos win at the final whistle pic.twitter.com/sak3WEzra2
— Sportsfile (@sportsfile) March 17, 2013
“There’ll be no kiss this time - I don’t think that will happen!” laughed Curran when speaking to RTÉ Sport.
“A polite handshake maybe!
“I know Frankie so long and I know that whatever the result, we’ll win with dignity or lose with dignity.”
Curran has ambitions of one day managing Roscommon, a job that is currently being done by Kevin McStay.
However, he says he never intended starting out on the road in management with Brigid’s - he wanted to spread his wings further.
“I always wanted to get out and educate myself in a different environment,” he noted.
“I didn’t want to step out of a dressing room as a player and right back into it as a manager with lads I’d played with for years.
“It wasn’t for me, but Frankie has taken on that job and he’s done very well. I wanted to go down a different road.
“I felt that if I wanted to prove myself, it would be best to do it away from my own environment and Padraig Pearses offered me the job. It’s a small enough pool of senior cubs here in the county, so I knew taking it that I was going to come up against my friends at some stage.”
Curran, a favourite of Hollywood star and former Rossie minor keeper Chris O’Dowd, has managed against his own club twice, in the group stages of this year’s and last year’s Roscommon SFC. But this is different.
There is a title at stake and the game is in Kiltoom (throw-in 3.30), a stone’s throw from where he lives and many of his oldest friends will be cheering against him.
“I still do a bit of underage coaching at the club, my two daughters, Lauren and Abby, play there and I help out with the coaching and I’d go up for the odd pint,” explained the man known affectionately as ‘Cake’.
“There might be a few naysayers or people giving me funny looks, but most people are great and we’re having a bit of craic about it.”
Brigid’s are the superpower of Roscommon football these days and are expected by most informed observers to lift the cup.
But Padraig Pearses are a club with serious ambitions of their own and this outlook is shared by their 45-year-old boss.
He noted: “I won my first county title against Pearses in 2005 and the year we won the All-Ireland they gave us all of it we could handle, as I recall. This is a club knocking on the door for a few years now and one day it is going to open.”
