In Boyle, they don’t know where the 95 years went. There’s nobody around from the last time they were in a county final, all the way back in 1927. Nobody to put their finger on why it’s taken so long to punch a return ticket.
These are no minnows. Boyle is the second biggest town in Roscommon so it’s never been a problem of numbers. There’s a big soccer contingent about the place but even so, players of substance have always been available.
Run your finger down along the decades and most of the best Rossie teams have had a couple of Boyle players dotted through them. But they’ve never pulled it all together to make it to the Hyde on the day that matters most.
“I don’t know, is the honest answer,” says Enda Smith. “We would always have been cyclical enough at underage, probably winning something around once or twice every decade. The fulcrum of this team is based on a couple of good underage teams from 2012 and 2013 – that would have been my year and [brother] Donie’s year. A lot of us are in our late 20s now so it’s probably about time!
“But I suppose from a longer-term point of view, the big strongholds in Roscommon have always been in the south of the county. Athlone is such a big population centre with people using it as a base for Dublin. So that means clubs like St Brigid’s and Clann na nGael always have lots coming through and they’re always strong. But saying that, 95 years is obviously way too long.”
They’re making up for it as the days tick down to Sunday’s decider against Strokestown. The Fahey Cup hasn’t been won by a club north of Roscommon town since 2009 so neither side needs telling about the rarity of the opportunity here.
A Boyle GAA GoFundMe page set up after the semi-final defeat of Brigid’s has long since doubled its target figure of €5,000. The town has hung up its brightest colours and Roscommon GAA are expecting the biggest county final crowd in years.
Smith is quite content to be removed from it all, filling the week with his day job as a teacher in St Declan’s College, Cabra in Dublin. His contribution to the campaign has grown with every passing round, primarily because he missed the start of it due to injury.
“He had been carrying a groin niggle through Roscommon’s inter-county season, the sort of tell-tale irritant that most inter-county players with a decade behind them at the top level must endure. His intention was to head to America for the summer once the Rossies were done. His pelvis said otherwise.
“The doc couldn’t find anything other than the usual niggles with hip and groin that I’ve always had,” he says. “I was getting through training and games and we decided to get it scanned at the end of the county season to see was there anything there. It ended up that there was a stress fracture in my pelvis.
“I kind of knew on some level that there was something there. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t just the typical tight groin or tight hips. I thought I’d be able to manage it if I went to America for the summer. But essentially I was told no – trying to manage it on the hard ground over there would probably have led to me cracking it and I could have done massive damage to it. So I stayed home and got it sorted.”
In the end, he was out for almost three months. The hardest bit was doing nothing for the first month and from there, he built slowly and gradually to get back to where he needed to be.
He got back for the end of the group stage and Boyle have seen the benefit ever since. Between Smith, his brother Donie and Cian McKeon they have three established inter-county forwards. Add in under-20 star Daire Cregg – who surely won’t be long joining them – and they have about as potent a club attack as you could wish for.
Moulding them and coaxing them along is Smith’s older brother, Cian. Had the ball bounced differently for him, Cian Smith would be playing tomorrow, most likely eking the last, best effort out of his 34-year-old bones.
He was the first of the Smith brothers to make a splash at inter-county level, winning a minor All-Ireland back in that cloudburst year of 2006. To his younger brothers, he was a trailblazer.
But everything changed the following year when he came home from training one night and found his father idly chatting to Nash Patil, a family friend. Cian made a bit of smalltalk and Patil noticed that he was a bit hoarse.
Nobody else would have passed any remarks but Patil happens to be an Ear, Nose and Throat consultant and asked Cian to drop into him for a check-up. Cian left it for a fortnight and, in the end, only did it to be mannerly. It probably saved his life.
He found that he had third stage cancer in his throat, specifically on his left vocal cord. And so within weeks, the 19-year-old was in surgery in St Vincent’s in Dublin. He had to have one side of his larynx removed and underwent intensive radiation. He spent six weeks in hospital and only the fact that he had a footballer’s fitness saved him from a longer stay.
It didn’t end his playing career – not right away at any rate. He got back on the pitch the following year and kept at it for a few seasons afterwards.
But he found it so much harder than everyone else to get his breath and eventually had to get a tube inserted to free up his airways. By 2014, he had gone into goals to try and stay involved but he eventually had to call time at the end of that season. They organised a testimonial and raised over €11,000 for the local hospice.
“It was a tough few years for him. He gave up football in 2014 and had the tracheotomy after it. In fairness to him, he’s hard to keep down. Give him a challenge and he’ll get on with it. We always say he loves football more than myself and Donal. He’s just obsessed with training and coaching,” said Enda.
“A lot of people have been very good to him. Fergal O’Donnell, who is our neighbour at home, got him involved in teams, helping out, going to games. That got his grá for coaching going and he was in with a good few different teams. Coolera-Strandhill in Sligo got to the county final in 2019, a couple of local clubs too. Then he took us over last year.”
When the elder Smith took the job, the ultimate aim was obvious. Boyle were a crowd that were always thereabout but never actually there. After winning an Intermediate title in 2013, they treaded water at senior for a few years before making it to a county semi-final in 2016, their first in 72 years. St Brigid’s rinsed them, 4-10 to 2-8.
“Total non-performance,” Enda Smith says now. “It was the same again the following year when we were well-beaten again in the semi-final. I think we felt at the time that that was probably as good as we were. Maybe happy enough to make it to the semi-final stage.
“But definitely then over the years, we kept falling in semi-finals and it felt worse and worse. People would have said that Boyle were a grand team to get through the group stages but when it came to the nitty-gritty, they didn’t turn up.
“When Cian went for the job, myself and Donal were like, ‘We’re behind you if you want it but are you really sure?’ Because he was going to be dealing with some of his best friends, maybe having to drop them and whatever. That’s a tricky dynamic.
“But to be fair to him, he’s his own man, very much a straight-shooter. His stock phrase is, ‘The eyes don’t lie’. He’ll observe, take in the information and make his decision based on what he sees. The lads have all bought in. Easy to say that when we’re winning though! Everyone’s a great lad when you’re winning.”
As it was in 1927, so it is today. Some truths are timeless.
