Iconic tache bites the dust
Dominic raises vital funds
LEINSTER LGFA President and well know Wicklow resident Dominic Leech bid farewell to his beloved moustache and flowing locks last weekend as he played his part in raising money for the #DoitforDan campaign.
It’s 36 years since the area between his upper lip and his nose has been naked but on Saturday evening the deed was performed in his house in Newtown and an impressive €4,555 was raised for Laois youngster Dan Donoher, son of former Laois footballers Aisling and Niall Donoher, who needs lifesaving treatment in the US.
‘As Leinster President I was saying that this was a very good cause and we were kind of encouraging people to do things for Dan,’ said a freshly shaved Dominic on Tuesday morning. ‘Because I had the hip replacement, I wasn’t in the position to do a 10k walk or anything like that. So, I had been speaking to a guy called Roy Buckley, a guy I do gigs with, and he said would you ever take off the moustache and I said ‘no, I wouldn’t take it off and I’d have to get an awful lot of money for it’.
‘I just kind of thought of that and said maybe I’d do that. It kind of snowballed from there, really. I know Aishling, his mother, well. She would have been on Leinster interprovincial teams over the years and I would have managed the Leinster interprovincial teams a couple of times when she was on it.
‘She played with Laois. She’s an exceptionally good footballer. She has given support to Leinster over the years so I kind felt that it would be nice to able to do something, and it’s a good cause,’ he said.
It’s been 36 years since Dominic last shaved his moustache off apart from the odd trimming or alteration of some kind and it was a more profound undertaking than people might realise, as well as frightening on the morning after the night before.
‘I was actually talking to my mother and we were discussing it; I think the last time I got the moustache of, and I’d be fairly sure, was in 1994. Now, I have to say, in fairness, it’s a bit like Trigger’s broom. in that I’ve shave it down so it’s not the same moustache. There’s always been a moustache over my lips for the last 36 years.
‘It frightened the life out of me. Everybody thought it was so funny, but it wasn’t their face.
‘The last time I did it, which was 36 years ago, I was horrified by the result. Now, the only thing that was saving me was that I was going to be in the house, I wasn’t going to be at a lot of functions.
So, in that way it was probably and easy way out.
‘When I actually did it, I got up (the next morning), sleepy head, the morning after, I walked into the bathroom and frightened the living daylights out of myself, because I knew this person was me but it took me a while to remember that I had shaved off the moustache and the hair.
‘I don’t find it that odd this time. I haven’t to be honest (made a decision about whether to grow it back or leave it bare). I don’t think it’s fair that I don’t go out into society without the moustache. It’s a bit of a cop out to do it and the next time everyone sees you, you have the moustache back, because you know the Irish tradition of slagging – I’m due a slagging, so if it gives people a bit of humour in these times I don’t mind,’ he said.