Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
HE ALWAYS ANSWERED THE COL
MAYO BID FAREWELL TO LEGEND O’mahony: Boyle was the type you relied on for big occasions
Rochford: His effort level was relentless
BY KARL O’KANE
FORMER Mayo boss Stephen Rochford has hailed the “relentless effort” of Colm Boyle as the veteran defender announced his retirement from the intercounty game.
Rochford – who managed Boyle to the 2016 and 2017 All-ireland finals – last night paid tribute to the 36-year-old.
Rochford said: “Without being all cliched, Colm was small in size but not in heart.
“He knew he had to bring an edge to his game because he wasn’t as physically imposing as some of his peers.
“He always played it on the front foot and took the game to the opposition, be that in his defensive role, or when Mayo had the ball.
“He was able to deliver both sides of what was expected of him as a defender.
“You got reliability and you got loads of a guy that understood that every time he was going out, he was representing the people of where he came from.”
BY
GIVEN the fierce energy he brought to the Mayo team in his pomp, it’s quite the irony that Colm Boyle was a slow starter.
He has brought the curtain down on his inter-county career, 13 years after he made his senior debut, but up until 2012 it appeared as though it would be stillborn.
However, from the age of 25 to 31 he won four Connacht titles, played in five All-ireland finals (including a draw and replay in 2016) and won four All Stars.
After winning an All-ireland under-21 title in 2006, John O’mahony gave him his senior debut in 2008 but that year’s Connacht final against Galway proved a difficult afternoon and he was gone before half-time.
In the early days of his garda training, he lost ground and wasn’t on the panel the following year.
“When you drop a player they can react in two ways – they can react by blaming the world for it or they can actually put the head down and say ‘I’ll prove them wrong’ and in every sense Colm Boyle did that,” said O’mahony.
It still took a few years for him to establish himself with Mayo but O’mahony was in no way surprised by the heights he scaled once he
did.
“I wasn’t a bit but I suppose at times you put the onus on players to work harder.
“He lost fitness when we were starting out the 2009 season and he was away.
“He was out in Clifden in the guards at the time as well but he answered all the calls for Mayo.
“He really is a great role model for young players.
“The most important thing is to have the attitude and the passion and the commitment and the enthusiasm and Colm Boyle had all those things.”
With four All Stars, he sits alongside his now former team-mates Lee Keegan and Keith Higgins as Mayo’s most decorated players in the history of scheme.
Colm Cooper (Kerry), Peter Canavan (Tyrone) and John O’leary (Dublin) are the only other players to have won four or more awards in years where their county didn’t win the All-ireland.
“He’s in good company there, yeah,” added O’mahony.
“He deserves every accolade that he got because he just left everything on the pitch, that was on every day.
“The bigger the occasion became, the better he got.
“Some players sometimes maybe are frightened by the big occasion and others are inspired by it and Colm Boyle was one of the ones that was inspired by it.”