Bringing Sam to the Boyle is part of grand plan
DEFENDER EPITOMISES MAYO DRIVE FOR GLORY
Boyle’s story has more of the struggle to it Questions were raised about Mayo’s use of Boyle
MOTORISTS following the serpentine road from Newport into Westport last Monday morning contended with rotten weather.
In the village of Kilmeena, not far outside Westport, their progress was checked by a garda on traffic duty after an accident. One sharp-eyed motorist spotted the man beneath the peaked cap and the rain gear.
Colm Boyle was six days out from his fourth All-Ireland final and his status among the supporters of Mayo was indicated by the reaction to news of his sighting reaching Twitter.
This was less than 24 hours after the latest resignation of a Garda commissioner and Boyle’s champions were quick to propose him for the job.
There is, of course, nothing that Mayo fans believe Colm Boyle cannot do.
He is as close as you will get to a physical manifestation of Mayo’s right stuff. If there is a personification of the team built by James Horan and ushered towards successive finals by Stephen Rochford, it is in the compact frame of the 31-year-old defender.
If the modern Mayo story spans seven seasons, from Horan’s first campaign in 2011 through to this one, then Boyle has been central to it.
He didn’t kick a ball in that first season, but by the time Mayo reached the 2012 final against Donegal, he was recognised as one of the most exciting spectacles in the game, a defender with resilience and temper packed tight inside him, and a buccaneering figure in attack.
Mayo’s best days have invariably revolved around Boyle and Lee Keegan propelling them onward, always onward, but whereas Keegan is the reigning Footballer of the Year, Boyle’s story has more of the struggle to it, given he was cast into the inter-county no-man’s-land for three years.
Since then, it could be reasonably argued that he has, poundfor-pound, been the county’s best player through this long, unstinting spell.
It is not as if he has slipped through seasons with the understatement of Denis Irwin; he is a three-time All Star.
But nine years ago, his prospects of a distinguished tenure in the green and red looked as bleak as Mayo’s own fortunes.
He was a wing-back on the Under-21 team that won the AllIreland in May 2006.
Two years later, Boyle was taken off five minutes before half-time in the Connacht final against Galway. Playing at corner-back, he was given twisted blood by Cormac Bane as Galway charged into a seven-point lead shortly before his substitution.
It was his second senior Championship match for Mayo, and in an unfamiliar corner-back posting. If he was in an alien position, he was generally just out of his depth.
‘It was always in the back of my head that if I didn’t get back by the time I was 24 or 25 it was not going to happen,’ he told the Irish
Mail on Sunday two years ago. ‘It took a bit of work. I looked at myself as to where I was going to go.’
He wasn’t introspective for long. Boyle knew he was not up to senior inter-county football until he got stronger and tougher.
He spent lunchtimes and early mornings in the gym at Davitts, the club of his parish Ballindine, which is tight to the Galway border in south-east Mayo.
His dimensions did not drastically change — he is 5ft 9ins and weighs 12 and a half stone — but he grew durable.
By the start of Horan’s second Championship in 2012, he was part of a dashing half-back line with Keegan and Donal Vaughan playing in between them.
Boyle’s best day for Mayo is often placed to the 2014 drawn semi-final against Kerry, and in particular a second-half performance that was incredible, with Mayo down to 14 players after the sending off of Keegan.
He was the inspiration and the engine of a Mayo comeback that should have seen them to victory. Instead, they were hauled back and beaten in a famous replay six days later. Boyle was one of the Mayo players who looked spent as that second match moved into extra-time, and he later admitted he was not happy with how he played in the re-match. It wasn’t until the arrival of Stephen Rochford as manager that Boyle’s performances returned to their previous level, and he won his third All Star last winter. That was testament to a campaign that couldn’t be overshadowed even by an own-goal in the drawn final. His form has been excellent in Mayo’s revitalisation through the qualifiers, too, which made some management decisions surrounding Boyle puzzling.
He did not start the Connacht semi-final defeat to Galway in Salthill, appearing as a substitute. Rochford later said the decision was a ‘tactical’ one, an explanation that still makes no sense given Boyle’s importance to the team.
Social media later made much of the decision to repeatedly substitute Boyle in the second half of games: he was replaced by Vaughan in the win against Cork and the draw with Roscommon.
His form in the second match, in particular, rallied Mayo’s comeback. He was replaced in the drawn semi-final against Kerry, a game in which he scored a goal, but his replacement Paddy Durcan kicked the equalising point that saved Mayo.
When he was called ashore in the rout of the Kingdom in the replay, though, it was with the game practically over and in calling him off, Rochford gave Mayo supporters the chance to acclaim their man with the contest won.
That he was consistently replaced going into the fourth quarter of matches led to suggestions of Rochford using pre-planned switches, but while that was denied it has been said that Boyle struggled with an ankle problem throughout the summer.
One local newspaper in Mayo reported that he left Croke Park after the replay against Kerry with heavy strapping on one of his ankles.
It won’t keep him out tomorrow. No player has been more influential in driving Mayo back into relevance over the last seven seasons. He’s back for one more push.