Boyle shows his true worth yet again
Damian Stack Mikey Boyle was again an inspirational figure as Kerry take fate into their own hands
THERE’S a streak of defiance to the man. The image you have of him is bursting out beyond his man, shrugging him off, barrelling by. His mindset mirrored in his physicality. You don’t ever get anything less than 100% from this guy.
It’s not like he hasn’t been praised over the years, but after a decade of consistent excellence, of first name on the team sheet stickability, there’s a chance you might take him for granted. He’s the heart and the soul of this Kerry team and without him they wouldn’t be half the team that they are.
We rightly marvel at Shane Conway’s grace and elegance (and, yes, his work-rate too), we revel in Colum Harty’s penchant for goals, we delight in Seán Weir’s aggression and determination, but Mikey Boyle really is the one who holds it all together.
At no stage was that more evident than in Stack Park on Sunday afternoon. Boyle held the line, held his nerve at a time in the match when it looked as though Kerry were in danger of fluffing their lines.
With Kerry failing to make the most of their chances down one end, Boyle was down the other cutting off Offaly at the pass. Playing with the six on his back, Boyle was the anchor of the entire team and seemed, quite a lot of the time, to have a free role in that sector of the pitch (especially after Cillian Kiely’s dismissal).
Boyle’s ability to be in the right place at the right time was uncanny and not coincidental. The Ballyduff man’s reading of the game, allied with his physical and technical traits (hands like magnets to the sliotar), make him a really effective performer on the half-back line.
Part of us would still like to see him up front – all those qualities and more make him absolutely lethal in front of the sticks – but the more he plays back on the half-back line the more Kerry have come to reply upon him back here.
Maybe that will change when Jason Diggins comes back into the side on his return from injury, but wherever he ends up you can be sure that Boyle will be in the thick of it, giving his all and delivering the goods.
To have a player as versatile as him is a Godsend to a manager with a relatively slight squad
of players. As we’ve already mentioned Diggins was out for last weekend’s game and fullback and captain Bryan Murphy was also out injured.
That’s the spine of the defence gone and Kerry were still able to hold Offaly for long stretches of the match. The Faithful didn’t really have much of a sniff of goal – apart from Eoghan Cahill’s effort which was well saved by Martin Stackpoole after eleven minutes – and went the final twenty six minutes of action without a score.
That’s impressive stuff from a defence and a credit to Boyle and his colleagues, guys like Weir whose dogged determination makes him a formidable presence every day he goes out, guys like Tomás O’Connor and Fionán Mackessey and, yes, guys like Shane Conway.
It plays against the popular perception of the Lixnaw flyer as his skilful hurler floating above the fray, but as his manager pointed out after the match, the
UCC man isn’t averse to getting his hands dirty, tackling and hooking.
It shows just how special a player Conway is. Equally it goes to shows how united and committed a bunch of hurlers this is and how determined they are to make a push for the league final after last year’s disappointment in Ennis.
The Kingdom’s victory over Offaly on their home patch puts them into the box-seat as regards qualification for the league final. It’s important, of course, to stress that the job is far from done and that there’s nothing guaranteed at this stage, but they do have one foot in the final as a result of the win over the Faithful.
The way the group is set up with three contenders a win over either of the other big two counties puts you in a powerful position in the group and likely to make the final as long as – and this is the important part – you don’t slip up against one of the other, less heralded, sides.
Kerry have held up their end of the bargain with wins in their first two games, but now having done the hard part it would be a real kick in the teeth if they weren’t able to get the job done on the road to Meath and Wicklow over successive weekends.
Which is not to say that either of those two games will be easy. After losing out to Meath in the first round of the first McDonagh Cup in 2018, the Kingdom know all about how good a side Meath can be, particularly on their home patch, while last weekend’s game in Navan showed how competitive Wicklow can be on their day (they only lost by three points to the home side).
Of course, even if Kerry did slip up on their journey through the eastern seaboard, they’d still have one final chance of sealing a final spot at home to Antrim on the last day of the group phase, but really it would be much better to be home and hosed by then if at all possible.
Offaly and Antrim’s meeting in the third round – the day after Meath entertain the Kingdom in Trim – will tell us a lot too. A win for Antrim will likely knock Offaly out of the reckoning. A win for the Faithful on their home patch will mean this goes right down to the wire.
Hopefully the Kingdom can get over it well before then and with a bit of luck they will.
The Kingdom’s victory over Offaly on their home patch puts them into the box-seat as regards the final