Dowdall's star continues to rise
By Damien Maher
Had someone from Kilkenny, or another of the leading camogie counties, scored a goal of the quality of Megan Dowdall’s strike at TEG Cusack Park last weekend, Sunday Game highlights would surely have followed.
The dashing midfielder showed skill and class to control the ball and fire a terrific shot to the roof of the net in Saturday's All-Ireland intermediate championship. Later, ten minutes into added time, she showed remarkable composure to slot over a 65-metre free as Westmeath earned a deserved draw against Kerry.
“I thought it was a draw at the time, so I wasn't too nervous about taking it! But then I realised it was only draw at the end. I didn’t really think about it (taking the free),” she recalled after the final whistle.
Westmeath were five points ahead in the second half, but lost their way somewhat and in a protracted period of added time, Kerry almost snatched victory, scoring a goal from a penalty in the tenth minute of injury-time.
“The stoppages killed our momentum a bit; there were long periods where we were standing around waiting. That stopped us a little bit. But we can’t really do anything about that.
VICTORY
“I think the frees we gave away were a factor also. These are things to work on for the next day,” observed Megan.
Kerry got just one score from play over the course of the game.
“We are kind of not going to think about it too much, take the positives from our display and move on: take the stuff we can learn from and bring it into the next game. Just focus on one game at a time,” said Megan.
“We’re happy to get the draw in the end; we’re just going to take this in our stride, work on what we have to and learn from the mistakes. That’s really all we can do.”
The Clonkill ace wasn’t surprised with Kerry’s tenacious display.
“We’re always closely matched and we know what to expect from Kerry. So, hopefully the next time we meet we will come out with the victory. We are now just going to focus on Laois in the next round,” she said.
On her wonder goal, Dowdall remarked: “At half-time we said, 'someone needs to step up’. So I had the ball in my hand and there was space in the middle, so I took the shot and thankfully it went in.”
It continues a great season for her, having been named Electric Ireland Camogie Third Level Rising Star Player of the Year.
“I’m happy out: I said during the week, it has been very surreal. It’s been a very positive year so far and hopefully now we will be able to keep it up with Westmeath,” she said.
Looking ahead to the Laos game in two weeks, Megan said Westmeath will be targeting a win.
“Hopefully it will be a different outcome to last year. We played them then and were a bit disappointed, so hopefully we are going to get a bit of revenge,” she smiled.