WITH a pint of beer in his hand, Justy Crozier peered from the roadside into the field to make sure his team-mate was okay.
‘Are you alright, Kobo?’ Crozier said, staring into the dusk as far as his eyes would allow.
It was November 6 2006, a bitterly cold night. Cold enough for black ice to own the country roads in and around south-west Antrim.
A few hours earlier, Cargin had claimed the Antrim senior championship with an extra-time win over Lamh Dhearg at Casement Park. It was the club’s fifth senior title, and Kevin O’Boyle’s first.
“My father (James) shook my hand after that win,” Boyle recalls, who was 18 at the time. “That was a big moment for me...”
The celebrations were in full swing back in the Erin’s Own club when O’Boyle, a teetotaller, decided to nip back to his house to grab a camera.
“I wanted to capture the memories,” he says. “I was driving back to the house and I flipped the car. It was around seven or eight o’clock in the evening. I wasn’t driving too fast but probably too fast for the conditions as there was black ice.
“Thankfully I was unhurt. I had to phone my dad who was in the club but I couldn’t get hold of him, so I rang Justy Crozier to get a hold of him.
Laughing at the image it conjures, O’Boyle adds: “It was pitch black and Justy was standing with a pint in his hand shouting: ‘Are you alright Kobo?’
“My father wasn’t shaking my hand when he had to come into the field and get me! So that ended the celebrations that night.”
Crozier gives his version of events.
“It was early enough in the night and I remember being in the Cargin club and got a phone call and it was ‘Kobo’. I answered it and I can’t exactly remember what he said, but he’d crashed the car and the reason he was ringing me was to tell his Da, but he couldn’t get a hold of him.
“So I told his father, God rest him. Ciaran Kelly and me headed out too. The car had flipped over but landed the right way up...”
One of the most impressive parts of the story which, thankfully, turned out okay was Crozier had the presence of mind to bring his beer with him.
“I had my pint and I didn’t wanna set her down!”
“Ironically, I was in a car crash with Kobo a few months before that,” Crozier adds.
“He was driving and we were coming home from MacRory Cup training [with St Mary’s, Magherafelt] and there was a bit of a pile-up of cars that went into the back of us...
“Kobo has more control of a corner-forward on a pitch than he has of a vehicle!”
Seventeen years on and with seven county championship medals at home, Kevin O’Boyle is still going strong.
With a rueful grin, O’Boyle says: “Every other championship we won after that, I decided to capture them in my mind.”
**********
IT’S approaching noon on Friday; it’s the last day before mid-term at Holy Trinity College, Cookstown with just the admin and teaching staff on site.
It’s a couple of weeks since Cargin won their 11th county title in an epic final with St Mary’s Aghagallon at Corrigan Park.
Kevin O’Boyle has literally dozens of teacher-parent meetings to wade through today and is spinning more plates than he probably needs, including this interview request which, clearly, he’s too polite to decline.
The Cargin man is fresh as a daisy and could comfortably pass for a placement student rather than someone who’s been teaching here and making a difference since 2010.
You ask about his job and you’re suddenly met with a tsunami of energy and passion, immediately sensing that his pursuit of excellence stretches far beyond the white lines of a Gaelic football pitch.
“I just enjoy doing what I do,” he says, over a coffee beside the staff room.
“I grew up on a farm and I never liked it particularly. My best job on the farm was standing in the gaps because I didn’t like getting my hands dirty, and that’s still the case.
“I wanted to work in schools so I just knew the direction I had to go in. I ended up going to St Mary’s and loving it. I did Maths teaching and from day one coming into Holy Trinity, I’ve loved it, and that was in 2010. I haven’t looked back.
“I’ve taught maths and science… I’ve been transition officer and I’m currently Head of Maths, so there have been opportunities to grow and learn.
“You realise every kid has a different wee path and you’re trying to support them as best as possible – not just so they get an A-star, but maybe just a pass, or sometimes just being in school is a success story for them.
“You’re their comfort blanket, you’re the person they see on a daily basis because you don’t know what the home is like. So it is a vocation, you have such a responsibility for the children and you want to make them the best person they can be.”
O'Boyle could give you chapter and verse as to why the school community desires - demands - a new build, which has been long overdue, and appears to have unstoppable momentum behind it, so that Holy Trinity College is fit for purpose going forward and that the population can jump from 1,000 to 1,300.
“We’re just waiting it to happen,” O’Boyle says.
“I know COVID delayed things but we’re very close to the diggers moving in. These kids in Holy Trinity and the wider area deserve a building that meets the needs and demands to make sure they can flourish and reach their potential both academically and socially and sporting-wise as well.”
And if a child is into their Gaelic Games, they’ve come to the right place. Pater Canavan, Adrian O’Donnell, John McKeever, Stefan Forker, Marty McGirr, Decky O’Neill, Aidan O’Hagan, Mark McGuigan, Michael Stevenson and Kieran McGeary all teach at Holy Trinity, all dyed-in-the-wool GAA men.
Oh, and Alex Doherty from Glen is currently on work placement.
*********
A YEAR after winning his first county championship and flipping his car on the same night, O’Boyle was drafted into the Antrim set-up under former boss Jody Gormley.
His 14 years of county service was only broken by injury. Whether for club or county, O’Boyle has always been the manager’s go-to man to nullify the best attacking player of the opposition.
Crozier mentions: “When you’re preparing for a championship match and there’s a real danger in the opposition team, everyone says: ‘Well, that’s Kobo’s job’. Sorted. Straight away. That’s something special to have in your team.”
So, it was no surprise when O’Boyle saddled up to Aghagallon’s brilliant attacker Adam Loughran in the county final, whose late, late goal broke Portglenone hearts in the semi-final.
In the 20th minute of last month's county decider, Cargin are pushing forward. O’Boyle decides to assist the attack, sprints forward, leaving Loughran’s side.
But, as soon as he’s made the decision to go, Aghagallon turn the ball over and from a long ball back into Cargin territory, Loughran catches it and fires to the net.
O’Boyle gambled, and lost.
Before Cargin ‘keeper John McNabb restarts the game, O’Boyle ambles over to Loughran and congratulates him on his goal.
There’s not a hint of sarcasm in the Cargin corner-back's words – just an appreciation of a class finish by his opponent.
“You have to respect Adam’s play. He took a great ball, he turned and finished it really well,” O’Boyle says.
“My first reaction was to congratulate him. I said: ‘Well done!’ And he said: ‘Thanks’, or whatever.”
For the remaining 40 minutes and the two periods of extra-time, Loughran doesn’t make another impression on the game.
O’Boyle is 35 going on 25 and was the best defender in this season’s county championship by a considerable distance.
“Anybody I’ve marked I’ll have conversation with them but I wouldn’t try and put them off. I remember during the Creggan game last year, one of their players said to the guy I was marking: ‘Don’t talk back to him, he’s trying to get into your head.’
“But it's not that at all. It’s not that I’m talking all the time. Sometimes if I get the vibe my opponent doesn’t want to talk, that’s alright. I’m just enjoying the game, the battle - nothing more, nothing less. I wish I had that smart psychological tactic [to put an opponent off], but it’s not there. I’m just enjoying playing football.
“And you know, if we’re attacking and they turn it over, I would give my man a wee nudge – ‘Let’s go – game’s on’ because you’re going toe to toe with good players and that’s the buzz that I get.
“I don’t fight or argue with my opponent. That’s not me. I shared a clip on social media a couple of years ago of Keith Higgins and James O’Donoghue just going hammer and tongs. It was deadly, that’s what I love.
“Do I thrive upon trying to take people out of a game? Yes. That’s like me scoring 10 points in a game. That’s my job. If my job is to completely sacrifice other aspects of my game, that’s okay. I love playing football, I’m really enjoying it at the minute and being injury-free. I’m just enjoying life.”
*********
ANTRIM’S messiah figure towards the end of the ‘Noughties’ was undoubtedly Liam ‘Baker’ Bradley. The Derry man was as uncompromising as they come.
For ‘Baker’, young O’Boyle was a slow burner of a defender. He liked him, but wanted a bit more devilment in the 20-year-old.
‘You may get that nasty streak in you’, ‘Baker’ would say to O’Boyle. ‘You should see the nips and welts on our Paddy [Bradley] from Dessie Mone marking him. He knew he was marking Dessie Mone.’
A few months had passed and ‘Baker’ would simply say to O’Boyle: ‘Keep doing what you’re doing.’
But O’Boyle didn’t change his game because he couldn't.
Even though he’d just turned 20, O’Boyle was used to being first choice for club and county. But, before Antrim faced Donegal in the 2009 Ulster Championship opener in Ballybofey, he was dropped from the starting line-up.
“Baker didn’t think I was physically big enough to cope with Donegal’s full-forward line. That was maybe the first real challenge I had, because things flowed for me before that and I made them happen.
“I'd played all the League games and challenge games leading up to that. And, yes, I was annoyed, but it was how I dealt with that.”
With the game in the melting pot, O’Boyle was thrust into the action after 44 minutes and in the dying embers, his Cargin club-mate Kieran Close made a brilliant catch. He ushered the ball to Terry O’Neill, Antrim’s trusted sweeper, who in turn found O’Boyle in space.
“Terry O’Neill kicked me the ball around my own ’45 and it just opened up,” O’Boyle recalls. “I attacked the line and kept going and kept going… I just went for it, the game was in injury-time.
“It was right on the sideline between the 21-metre and 13-metre lines and it went over the bar. It’s that feeling when you win a championship or when you make a block to win a ball… Being dropped that day was the barrier put in front of me and how I reacted to that disappointment.
“Whether the stars were aligned or whatever, I kicked the winner in injury-time. I went on the pitch, not to prove ‘Baker’ wrong but prove it to myself. Would I have run forward or would I have gambled and pulled the trigger if I hadn’t had that negative of not starting the game? Maybe not.”
O'Boyle wasn't dropped again under the 'Baker' as Antrim galivanted to their first Ulster final in nearly 40 years.
A series of injuries threatened to bring the curtain down on O'Boyle's playing career a couple of seasons ago.
He began to work smarter on the off-season, kicked less balls in training, listened to Cargin's S&C man Michael Mallon and is bouncing fit again. He’s ready for another crack at the Ulster Club tomorrow, a competition that has rarely smiled on the Erin’s Own men in recent years.
O’Boyle jokes that his back garden comes perilously close to infringing the Creggan parish, but he loves Cargin and all that it has given him.
He’s back coaching the nursery, P1s and P2s at the club, and is dutifully inspired by Niamh McKeever by simply how much she invests of herself in nurturing the love of Gaelic Games in the next generation.
It is perhaps during the kids' sessions O’Boyle has a deeper appreciation of what it means to be from Cargin.
He rhymes off the names of people and clans who have gone before and sustained the club through hard times.
For all of their successes and high standing in Antrim, Cargin is a relatively small parish.
A few years ago, the club was struggling for numbers at underage level, but O’Boyle remembers the hard-bitten determination in JC Devlin’s voice: ‘We’ll get enough.’
The late Paddy Devlin and Kevin McAuley – Cargin to their marrow.
He calls out more names, men and women, whose volunteering spirit was Herculean, some of whom couldn’t bear attending their semi-final against neighbours Creggan in Dunsilly.
Absolutely everything begins and ends with the club.
For a few brief moments, O'Boyle is transported back to his father’s handshake after the victorious final in 2006.
“That was the first time he praised me. My father passed away in 2012. He was a farmer and he didn’t get to go to much but he was at the window when I came home to hear about it. He shook my hand and that was it…”
O’Boyle’s voice breaks for a split second.
“You think there is nothing like your own club. But I know I’m lucky to be from Cargin and I belong to Cargin.”
He probably doesn’t realise it – but Kevin O'Boyle is still minding the gaps in Cargin, only in a different way...
AIB Ulster Senior Football Championship quarter-final: Erin’s Own, Cargin (Antrim) v Naomh Conaill (Donegal)
JUST because Cargin haven’t won a game in the Ulster Club Championship in their last five attempts doesn’t mean that their time is now.
If they could choose their opponent, it wouldn’t be the Donegal champions. Notoriously difficult to play against, Naomh Conaill will declare the terms of engagement at Corrigan Park tomorrow afternoon and have, quite literally, Jim McGuinness’s fingerprints all over them.
Few fancied Martin Regan’s men to emerge victorious over defending champions St Eunan’s, Letterkenny in the county final. But here they are on the provincial stage again, a little older. Better? Not necessarily.
Unlike in previous years, Cargin have had five weeks to prepare for their provincial assault. In the immediate aftermath of their extra-time win over Aghagallon, Cargin’s Pat Shivers insisted there can be “no excuses” this year.
Cargin have the shooters from distance and the free-takers to upset the bookmakers’ odds.
They are also very patient in possession – all necessary ingredients to break down an obdurate defence like Glenties who rely heavily on midfielder Ciaran Thompson and attacking duo Charlie McGuinness and Nathan Byrne.
Both sides have experience coming out their ears.
Tactically, Naomh Conaill are a head-wrecker of a team to play against.
In a game of anticipated fine margins, this is very winnable from a Cargin perspective - but the Donegal champions may just have enough scores in them to remain standing by the end in west Belfast tomorrow afternoon.
