Mayo star Boland excited ahead of Tooreen's All Ireland Final

Speaking to The Mayo News ahead of this weekend’s All Ireland intermediate hurling final, Tooreen star Fergal Boland is really looking forward to the clash with Tipperary’s Upperchurch Drombane. 

“I suppose the feeling is more excitement than anything. We feel like we've prepared really well throughout the year and over the last three weeks. We've done a lot of work on ourselves, and I suppose we've looked into the opposition as well, so we're really looking forward to the day now and trying to get the best performance out of ourselves and just giving the best account of ourselves on the day.”

Speaking about Tooreen, Boland explains his pride in the club and the area: “I'm incredibly proud of where I'm from and where I grew up. We're really passionate about hurling in the area and there's a really strong cohort of hurling in East Mayo. We're very proud of our hurling tradition in the club. We have some obviously brilliant volunteers and coaches and everyone involved in the club just rows in behind. It's an unbelievable club to be part of. Our volunteers make the club what it is. We're so grateful to them as well. It’s a great time to be part of the club.”

This Tooreen group enjoys an exceptionally close bond with numerous brothers involved as Boland explains. “There's a lot of us, a lot of brothers on the team. We're all really close. We're all within five minutes of the pitch. Even during Christmas, we're always down at the pitch. A group of us are always watching games together or having a cup of tea, we're a really close group. As well as that, we've been on the road for a good few years now. We're kind of used to each other. We know the way we want to play. We know our strengths and we know our weaknesses.”

Boland also paid a huge tribute to the Tooreen manager Ray Larkin who will patrol the sideline on Saturday evening. “Ray's been a legend at the club ever since he came in. He's a brilliant fella, a really good person, first of all, and then he's a really good manager. He's very approachable. He gives ownership over to the players. He's some unbelievable fellas with him too - Dom Greally, Brian Delaney, Austin Kenny, Aidan Morley, all them fellas. And the biggest thing about Ray is he gets the best people involved in the group. He's always constantly keeping the group fresh.

"He changes a coach or someone on the backroom team every year just to add something new to the team. So, Ray's been really good. He's an extremely ambitious fella as well, so it'd be great to get a performance for him as well.”

Touching on what victory would mean for the community steeped in hurling tradition, the talented attacker explains: “It would be unbelievable for the club, for the team. It would be nearly unbelievable. I'd love to do it for all our supporters and volunteers and everyone that has given us so much. It genuinely would mean the world, but I suppose you can't think about that too much. You just have to think about the game itself and getting the best out of ourselves and then hopefully that will lead to us winning in the end.”

On a personal level, the man who won an All Ireland football title with Mayo U-21s in 2016 said “It'd be unbelievable to win in All Ireland with Tooreen. At the start of your career and at the start of every year, that's one of your goals. You try and be ambitious. To win an All-Ireland with your club in Croke Park, that would be right up the top of your goals. Obviously, it's a club that means an awful lot to me. It's a huge part of my identity as a person. So, to win in All Ireland with my local hurling team and village would be unbelievable. As I said, we're not looking at it as a burden. It's more so as an opportunity and we just have to focus on ourselves. We have a massive task on our hands at the weekend. We're under no illusion, but we have huge belief in our squad and in our plan as well.”

ANALYSIS: Who are Tooreen's All-Ireland final opponents?