Hat-trick hero Boyle in wonderland
SITTING back against the railing at the side of the pitch in Stack Park, Aidan Boyle cut the ideal picture of contentment. And why wouldn’t he be? Few hurlers will ever experience a day as good as the one he was having.
He’d just helped his club back to the top of the roll of honour. He’d just scored three goals. He’d even set his brother Mikey up for a fourth. The big full-forward won his fourth county championship medal, bringing the Boyle family’s total to a whopping forty one in total between all the brothers and their illustrious father Liam.
If Heineken did county finals...
“No [I don’t remember playing a game as good as that],” he says.
“It’s great when everything works for you. This was special. We love that [underdogs tag], it’s water off a duck’s back to us. When you’re winning everybody wants to beat you, but then when we’re under the radar you’ll slip in, beat one, beat one, beat one and we knew if we were there or thereabouts we’d give it a good rattle.”
That’s Ballyduff for you, they’re indefatigable. They’ve got bouncebackability down cold and nobody have proven that more than Aidan Boyle this year. Last year he missed the final owing to a serious injury. Twelve months later and he’s the star of the show, the man of the match.
“I did my knee last year and I had to do an operation and I missed the final, the two finals I should say, it broke my heart,” he says.
“It was the first one I missed, since I started playing hurling. It killed me last year to watch it, but I said hopefully this year if I trained hard and if you do it, it pays off and today was my day, somebody must have been looking down on me.
“It was a very hard year last year. It’s genuinely harder on the line watching in than playing, 100%. It killed me last year, especially when I couldn’t even run into them, it was worse again I was only hopping around the place.
“It’s definitely harder on the line because you think I’d do this or I’d do that, but it’s a credit to all of them, one to fifteen, they’re an incredible bunch.”
That’s something he’s keen to stress. His brilliant day wouldn’t have been possible without the work of others. He was standing on the shoulders of giants.
“Every game we played all year up to the championship we had the fifteen. Fifteen, fifteen barely, fourteen/fifteen/sixteen,” he explains.
“We got a lot of fellas back and that’s a credit to the young fellas and the subs who were there all year playing from the start, kept us going. I think we’re in the County League final and the North Kerry championship final as well so we could do a clean sweep again this year.”
To win is great, to win with your brothers is something special. There’s a bond between those brothers that’s driven them and driven Ballyduff for the best part of a generation now.
“We do get on, but like that if you can’t take a slagging you’re gone! Pádraig thinks he’s funny in fairness to him and Michael thinks he’s funny too. I wouldn’t say I’m the coolest, but I’d be calm. Liam is getting very temperamental in his old age that fella,” he jokes
“But like that now he’s 37 and, like I said to him, a walking corpse! He’s stretching for two days before a match and warming up for a day and-a-half. He’s got great heart, great drive in him.”
It was great too that Liam Snr was present for the match on Sunday. Often-times he’s too nervous to watch his boys in action, but events transpired in such a way this year that he was there for both matches... all of them.
“He came in in ‘12 when I was captain with about five minutes to go because we were up about six points,” Aidan explains.
“He was actually here the last day as well, because he was an umpire for [referee] Mike Hennessy for the first game, so he had to stay then and he was very doubtful about coming today, but he said he would and I suppose with Michael being captain today he wanted to be here.
“It’s very special. It’s great for my father. It’s his life in fairness to him. He’ll be a proud man tonight.”