Jack Cooney and Ger Egan have praised Laois for their generous donation of €250 to the fundraising campaign for young Westmeath man Lee Wallace, who is battling a rare form of cancer.

The Westmeath players wore t-shirts that showed their support for the former St Mary's, Rochfortbridge footballer and St Brigid's hurler after their 1-13 to 0-13 victory in yesterday's Allianz Football League Division 3 final, while captain Kieran Martin also encouraged people to give what they can to the campaign - which has raised over €200,000 of a goal of €250,000 in less than a week - in his acceptance speech.

It emerged that Laois had held a whip-around on their team bus and dropped the proceeds into the Westmeath dressing-room after the game.

"Lee is a young man and he’s a good friend of a lot of lads on the team," Lake County boss Cooney told RTÉ.

"We’re trying to raise awareness and funds for Lee because he has to go to America to receive treatment that is available nowhere else in the world.

"Help Lee Beat Cancer is the campaign, there is a huge amount of work going on in the extended GAA family and Laois GAA made a contribution, which was great. Whatever we can do to help Lee along the way, we will.

"Not only within the GAA, within Irish communities, we’re brilliant at recognising things like that and rowing in behind that. It makes you proud to be Irish."

Man of the match Ger Egan also praised the Laois gesture on Twitter.

 

Shutout to the Laois football team for donating money to @LeeWallace4 cause, classy gesture, what the gaa is all about 👏 #AllianzLeagues #gaa

— Ger Egan (@geregan10) April 6, 2019

Shout out 🙄

— Ger Egan (@geregan10) April 6, 2019

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