Football

Antrim's Kevin O'Boyle happy to end the parade on his terms

From his debut in 2007, Kevin O'Boyle was an ever-reliable presence in the Antrim team. After deciding to retire from inter-county duty, he spoke to Cahair O'Kane about the good days, the bad and leaving the jersey in a better place...

Kevin O'Boyle did fine back-to-back jobs on Conor McManus in 2012 and 2013. He says he relished the idea of being left one-on-one with top forwards.
Kevin O'Boyle did fine back-to-back jobs on Conor McManus in 2012 and 2013. He says he relished the idea of being left one-on-one with top forwards. Kevin O'Boyle did fine back-to-back jobs on Conor McManus in 2012 and 2013. He says he relished the idea of being left one-on-one with top forwards.

“When I was a young boy,


My father took me into the city


To see a marching band.He said, ‘Son, when you grow up


Would you be the saviour of the broken,


The beaten and the damned?"


- Welcome to the Black Parade, My Chemical Romance

PUTTING Welcome to the Black Parade with Kevin O’Boyle feels a little bit like finding out about Steve Davis’s love of modern electronica.

Not to compartmentalise O’Boyle and Davis as one but as the now ex-Antrim man’s club and now-former county team-mate Michael McCann put it, it doesn’t necessarily fit with the persona.

There’s more to the studious O’Boyle than he often gives away.

He is a massive fan of My Chemical Romance, particularly the Black Parade album and title track. As McCann threw up some old tunes on his Instagram page last week, quickly O’Boyle found himself drawn back.

“I haven’t listened to it in a few years but it brought back a lot of fond memories,” he smiles.

Perhaps there’s something in the lyrics.

When he was a young boy his late father James, a busy milking farmer, took him everywhere to games.

Days in the big city, watching the Antrim players march behind the band in Casement Park, it sparked off a dream in him that he would live over a 14-year span.

Coming up through underage, though, there weren’t huge indications that he would make the grade.

Talented, obsessed, but small, O’Boyle’s younger days were played out in the full-forward line.

“In club games, Tomás [McCann] used to kick me the ball and I’d give it back to him. I was a good ball-winner but not a natural scorer.”

Small, pacy and with an informed head on young shoulders, he was the prototype underage corner-forward.

Now a teacher alongside Peter Canavan at Holy Trinity in Cookstown, he would have spent his days studying the Tyrone legend at the peak of his powers.

The way he was able to survive, and thrive, despite his relative lack of size were an inspiration to O’Boyle.

He’d study the movement of Mike Frank Russell, all the while trying to learn how to move like these men, how to receive a ball like them, how they turned.

But when he was shifted to wing-back on the St Mary’s Magherafelt MacRory Cup team, and then into centre-back by club minor manager Darren Craig, the transition began.

He was to the manor born. JC Devlin throwing him in at corner-back for his first year of senior football was the final piece of the puzzle. Cargin would win the championship and O’Boyle would win player of the year.

“That was me corner-back. People say they hate being stuck in the corner, but I love it. That’s where I plied my best trade.

“You’re not locked to stay in the corner. If you had to shut somebody down I’d do that but you can definitely still play football from there.

“I tried my best to get on the ball as much as possible. Sometimes you have to know your strengths too, that maybe giving it to someone else to shoot is the right option.”

He rarely took the shot on. When he married Laura, his brother said in his best man speech that the nickname Kobo was an acronym: Kicked Over the Bar Once.

It brought the house down, though the truth is that the self-explanatory nickname was spat out by the original social network, Bebo, when his first choice wasn’t available.

“I kicked Cargin’s last two points in the county final last year, so take that statement back!” he laughs when it’s suggested there’s an irony in him being perhaps best remembered for the rarest of scores.

Antrim only won three Ulster championship games during Kevin O'Boyle's career, and he was at the heart of two of them. Here he blocks a last-gasp Ryan McCluskey shot in the 2014 win over Fermanagh, while in 2009 he kicked a remarkable winner against Donegal.
Antrim only won three Ulster championship games during Kevin O'Boyle's career, and he was at the heart of two of them. Here he blocks a last-gasp Ryan McCluskey shot in the 2014 win over Fermanagh, while in 2009 he kicked a remarkable winner against Doneg Antrim only won three Ulster championship games during Kevin O'Boyle's career, and he was at the heart of two of them. Here he blocks a last-gasp Ryan McCluskey shot in the 2014 win over Fermanagh, while in 2009 he kicked a remarkable winner against Donegal.

He does, for a man who occupied a corner-back slot for virtually his entire inter-county career, have the rare distinction of being best remembered for a winning score.

Yet despite kicking a miraculous winner in Antrim’s most significant victory of his entire playing career, O’Boyle isn’t prone to forget what drove him up the field that day in Ballybofey.

Of his 31 championship appearances for his county, that was the only game he didn’t start when he was fit to play.

“The stars just aligned. I grew up very small. My Dad took me to those games and made me study different players, how they moved.

“When I was going to games, I maybe wasn’t getting on teams when I was younger because I was so small. But I always stuck it and he always took me and said ‘look how he moves’. I’d have been out in the back lawn practicing.

“The only one game I haven’t started when I’ve been fully fit was that Donegal game. Baker [Liam Bradley] dropped me, and it was the same story as growing up. He said he needed somebody bigger in.

____________________________________


KEVIN O’BOYLE


Club: Erin's Own, Cargin 


Age: 33


Championship debut: 2007 v Derry


Championship appearances: 31


Championship starts: 28


Minutes played: 1,645


Scored: 1-3


____________________________________

“They had [Michael] Murphy and [Colm] McFadden in, and he was going with somebody bigger. He brought me on early in the second half and I went on with a real point to prove.

“Maybe if I hadn’t had that point to prove, I wouldn’t have sneaked further up the pitch. It just happened to work out. I had the motivation to prove him wrong.”

Not only would he regain and keep his place for the rest of the most remarkable summer in which Antrim would reach a first Ulster final for 39 years, but he would never be dropped again.

When he was fit, he occupied a jersey. His only championship goal came in a Tommy Murphy Cup semi-final against London in 2008, and he pointed just twice more beyond that day in Ballybofey.

His speciality, though, was man-marking. In back-to-back games against Conor McManus in 2012 and 2013, the Cargin man came out on top. There were regular battles with Martin Penrose, Marty Reilly, Seanie Johnston, Conor Maginn, Tomás Corrigan.

Upon the retirement of Mayo’s Keith Higgins, a video surfaced of clips from his defining battle with James O’Donoghue. It was a masterclass in one-on-one defending, the same duty that really got O’Boyle’s blood pumping.

“I loved that challenge of being able to mark the Conor McManus’. I loved playing at that high level. Sometimes you might look on envious of those players but it’s up to you to instil the culture that you’re playing against them.

“The likes of David Kelly from Sligo, he was a cracking player who unfortunately had injuries. I had great tussles with him. Conor Laverty, his trickery and movement. I loved those challenges against the best players.

“It’s been different in recent years because you’re playing corner-back with a blanket in front of you.

“The new style of defender is maybe scared to be left one-on-one, but they’re also happy to attack because they have cover. Flip it around and it’s maybe how your team sets up.

“I don’t think it’s limited to that might never happen again because it did happen a few times for me last year, and that’s maybe why I enjoyed coming back so much. I had a real hunger and perhaps the style we were playing added to that.

*

O’BOYLE had made his decision very early. He knew when Lenny Harbinson called him in on the back of a return to fitness and form with Cargin that it would be one last hurrah.

The previous three years had been a nightmare. He was only fit to come off the bench in 2017 having missed the whole National League with a knee injury.

The following year, he started against Down but was being plagued by a groin injury. The following day, Cargin played rivals Lámh Dhearg in a club league game.

A fortnight later, he only lasted half an hour against Offaly before coming off. Osteitis pubis, a debilitating groin injury, had taken hold. That looked like that in an Antrim shirt.

“Different things had built up on me and it just broke down. I tried to play the qualifier against Offaly and had to come off. That’s when it really hit.

“I had a real battle with it over the next year-and-a-half

“They say it’s tougher than the cruciate because with the cruciate, you know you’ll be out for a long time but you have lots of wee goals you hit on the way, and they’re all achievable, it’s a structured process to get you back.

“Whereas this process is very mentally tough because you don’t know where the journey will take you, and you continually break down with it.

“A lot of people get it when they’re growing too fast, so hopefully I’m still growing! Or else it’s when the body can’t take the load any more, and I believe that county-club overlap at my stage of life was just too much for me.

“I did yoga, took injections, painkillers, anti-inflammatories, and even after them you’re in pain. Those things were the only way I seemed to be able to play and that wasn’t how I wanted to be.”

But with Marty Loughran’s expertise and Damian Cassidy’s patience, O’Boyle used the first lockdown in 2020 to put the finishing touches to his rehab.

It hadn’t looked good up until then but the relaxation of any self-imposed pressure to get fit for games gave him the breathing space.

And when he returned to kick those two late points against neighbours Creggan in a dramatic county final, O’Boyle was ready for one final crack at inter-county football.

That he kept such a tight leash on Marty Reilly, who would end the year as an Allstar nominee, was a far more fitting way to go out than hobbling off the pitch in Tullamore two years earlier.

Kevin O'Boyle fought back from three years of injuries to make a fine last appearance for Antrim against Cavan's Martin Reilly in last year's championship. 
Kevin O'Boyle fought back from three years of injuries to make a fine last appearance for Antrim against Cavan's Martin Reilly in last year's championship.  Kevin O'Boyle fought back from three years of injuries to make a fine last appearance for Antrim against Cavan's Martin Reilly in last year's championship. 

Cavan were one of only three teams Antrim beat in Ulster during his career. Two of the wins came inside 13 days during that unforgettable 2009 journey, while O’Boyle was again at the heart of the other.

They looked home and hosed against Fermanagh in 2014 before the hosts mounted a late rally that culminated in a last-gasp chance for Ryan McCluskey, but O’Boyle got back on the line to stop the shot and seal the win.

For a corner-back to have such a monumental, dramatic and critical impact on the rare occasions they won brings back the Black Parade lyrics again.

Antrim have been the broken, the beaten and the damned too often. On those days, he got to be the saviour.

He’s never felt that he’s been anything else than lucky.

“They talk about bubbles massively at the minute and since 2007, I’ve been in the bubble of inter-county football.

“I loved it. I loved everything about it – the challenges, trying to better yourself, better others around you, trying to drive that culture of why you’re there and a vision of what it means to play for Antrim.

“It’s an honour to pull on the jersey and I was one of the lucky ones that got to do so. I got to lead the team out in three different campaigns, under the trust of Baker, Frank Dawson and Lenny, and never took it once for granted.

“I won’t complain about the journey I’ve had, it all brought experiences to me. You just would have liked more of the better days, like the journey of ’09 or the day against Kildare [in 2010].

“You always hear that saying about leaving the jersey in a better place. I don’t know if I did, but I know I tried to.”

He knows Enda McGinley well enough from being around Cargin club, and is convinced that bringing Stephen O’Neill and Sean Kelly into the backroom is a masterstroke that will give Antrim a serious bounce.

The conversation was had but O’Boyle politely declined. He’d wanted to leave on his own terms and he achieved that.

Now a father of two, he will keep kicking with the club. He’s coaching in Holy Trinity and is due to soon move up into MacRory Cup football again with the side he and Kieran McGeary have taken from first year.

The Saffron jersey is owed nothing by Kevin O’Boyle.

If and when Antrim return to the city, those that march behind the band would do well to match what he gave.