Retirements

Started by Maroon Manc, July 09, 2018, 01:50:38 PM

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grounded

Quote from: Cunny Funt on November 23, 2021, 12:47:33 PM
What a warrior Colm Boyle was.

Yep a cracking player. Gave his all.

seafoid

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/mayo-s-colm-boyle-announces-intercounty-retirement-1.4736323

The Davitts halfback won four All Stars in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017 - a Mayo record alongside Lee Keegan and Keith Higgins.

He was on the losing side in five All-Ireland finals, but missed the 2020 and 2021 defeats.

He did however win an Under-21 All-Ireland in 2006.

Boyle's departure from the intercounty scene means only Lee Keegan, Kevin McLoughlin, Cillian O'Connor, Aidan O'Shea and Jason Doherty remain from the Mayo side beaten in the 2012 All-Ireland final.
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

seafoid

Joey Holden and Colin Fennelly, both Kilkenny
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

Gael85

Paul Broderick and Shane Redmond Carlow both retired.

JoG2

Quote from: grounded on November 23, 2021, 09:41:18 PM
Quote from: Cunny Funt on November 23, 2021, 12:47:33 PM
What a warrior Colm Boyle was.

Yep a cracking player. Gave his all.

One of great half backs in modern football, serious player

Champion The Wonder Horse

Quote from: rrhf on July 29, 2021, 11:32:20 AM
O She is another one of these players you can play anywhere but really play nowhere for too long.. That is not a criticism - he has never truly owned a role. However to say he is not one of the best Footballing characters of the last 10 years in the game and dosent deserve to win an all ireland medal is crazy. Like the O Connors, Keegan and others, Mayo deserve to be winning the All Ireland this year, and I for one will be cheering them on to their destiny.

I hope you weren't too disappointed.

Fear ón Srath Bán

Quote from: Champion The Wonder Horse on November 24, 2021, 10:52:50 PM
Quote from: rrhf on July 29, 2021, 11:32:20 AM
O She is another one of these players you can play anywhere but really play nowhere for too long.. That is not a criticism - he has never truly owned a role. However to say he is not one of the best Footballing characters of the last 10 years in the game and dosent deserve to win an all ireland medal is crazy. Like the O Connors, Keegan and others, Mayo deserve to be winning the All Ireland this year, and I for one will be cheering them on to their destiny.

I hope you weren't too disappointed.

;D
Carlsberg don't do Gombeenocracies, but by jaysus if they did...

Farrandeelin

It's a hard one to take. Boyle typified the resilience of the team for the last 10 years. Why he wasn't brought on in the final this year I'll never know.
Inaugural Football Championship Prediction Winner.

seafoid

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/ciar%C3%A1n-murphy-born-on-the-right-side-of-the-border-for-mayo-colm-boyle-will-be-missed-1.4737466

Ciarán Murphy: Born on the right side of the border for Mayo, Colm Boyle will be missed
A thunderous footballer, the Devitts clubman hails from a curious part of the GAA world
about an hour ago

Ciaran Murphy



Colm Boyle has retired, and another great from the last decade of football is gone. He leaves with four All Star awards, a record for Mayo which he shares with Lee Keegan and Keith Higgins.
He was a thunderous footballer, a man who played with the sort of ferocity that defined this Mayo team. He might not have been their greatest player, but he might just have been the most perfect iteration of what a James Horan-era Mayo player was. He was, put simply, a great bit of stuff.
Since the news was announced in the Mayo News earlier this week, glowing testimonies will have rung in his ears, similar in some respects to those that greeted the retirements of some of his storied teammates - men like Tom Parsons, David Clarke, Donal Vaughan, Chris Barrett and Seamie O'Shea who all stepped away within days of each other last January.
But this one hits differently for me, because Boyle grew up just a few miles from where I grew up, on opposite sides of the Galway-Mayo border.
The border between the counties couldn't have a more spectacular western-most starting point, on either side of beautiful Killary Harbour. Leenane looks across at Aasleigh and the mountains around Delphi, and as the border moves east, along the Loughs Nafooey, Mask and Corrib, it moves into the rather more understated visual charms of the footballing heartlands of south Mayo and north-east Galway.

And that's where the border issue becomes personally fraught. Boyle grew up in Ballindine, which along with Irishtown, is the home of Davitts GAA Club, named after Michael Davitt, the founder of the Land League. And if Davitt was not a man to back down from a fight, then the club that bears his name does him no disservice.


I remember playing one or two challenge games at under-12 level against them, or maybe younger, but playing them in adult football seemed to be off-limits. There was obviously something about the arrival of puberty which necessitated we be kept apart - an excess of testosterone across the board perhaps. I tried to find out from the village elders if there was one incident in particular that led to our tribes being separated like this, but a veil of silence fell and I hastily dropped the matter.
It might have had something to do with a certain long-standing tradition in the vicinity on the evening of Galway/Mayo games. If Galway won, we in Milltown would send our most diplomatically-sensitive emissaries to Ballindine and Irishtown, in a spirit of friendship and comity of course, to discuss the game with the locals.
If Mayo won, the favour would be zestily returned in the opposite direction. Keeping the lines of communication open was deemed very important, at least on Connacht final night.
Complications

It being the GAA, there were complications. Ballindine lies flush up against the Galway border. Milltown lies five miles inside the county. So if your nearest school was in Ballindine or Irishtown, then it stood to reason that you would attend that school, and, in time, perhaps play football for the local club with your school friends. . . even if your house was actually in Co Galway.
So there are isolated tales of All-Ireland-winning underage Mayo footballers (not Colm Boyle, I hasten to add) who were actually born and lived in the county of Galway. That may not make sense geographically, but it is at least intellectually consistent.
More baffling to the naked eye is the Gael, born and living on the Galway side of the border, who is a rabid supporter of Davitts, a club lest we forget affiliated to the Mayo county board, but who then also shouts for Galway, against Mayo.

One such individual was so vocal in his celebrations of Galway's 1998 All-Ireland win that his jawing precipitated a mass walk-out from a pub in Irishtown that night and the local publican, it is said, had to retire to his bed, heartsick at this affront to his sensibilities. The man in question, who was so raucously rejoicing in Galway's win, had been a manager of the Davitts senior team, and his son had even worn the Green and Red with distinction. The mind truly boggles.


And lest you think that such petty border squabbles are of no concern to you, this controversy goes all the way to the top. Sabina Higgins, wife of our current President, has similarly divided loyalties. I quote here directly from the President's official website - "Sabina Coyne, now Higgins, was born. . . on the Galway-Mayo border and went to school in Ballindine and Claremorris, Co Mayo."
Any reasonable person would be inclined to infer from this that she is a Mayo woman. But we in Milltown know different. Mrs Higgins, you can no longer run from this. Even now, for the good of the country, admit the error of your ways, return to the fold.

If there was a way for us to claim Boyle as one of our own, we would - but there has hardly ever been a player whose pride in his native county was more plainly, obviously seen. He will be missed.
"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

shark

Quote from: seafoid on November 25, 2021, 07:47:10 AM
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/ciar%C3%A1n-murphy-born-on-the-right-side-of-the-border-for-mayo-colm-boyle-will-be-missed-1.4737466

Ciarán Murphy: Born on the right side of the border for Mayo, Colm Boyle will be missed
A thunderous footballer, the Devitts clubman hails from a curious part of the GAA world
about an hour ago




I know a family who live on the Galway side of that divide. A significant minority of the family members are maniacal Mayo supporters. The Milltown people I know speak about Ballindine as if it's on another planet entirely. I find it all very amusing.

Blowitupref

Eoin Cadogan put in some shift in both codes for Cork
Is the ref going to finally blow his whistle?... No, he's going to blow his nose

grounded

Quote from: seafoid on November 24, 2021, 11:33:11 AM
Joey Holden and Colin Fennelly, both Kilkenny

31 and 32 respectively. You'd imagine that for such quality players they would have a few years left.  Four AI's each. Good luck to them.

seafoid

"f**k it, just score"- Donaghy   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbxG2WwVRjU

whitey

Quote from: shark on November 25, 2021, 09:04:01 AM
Quote from: seafoid on November 25, 2021, 07:47:10 AM
https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/gaelic-football/ciar%C3%A1n-murphy-born-on-the-right-side-of-the-border-for-mayo-colm-boyle-will-be-missed-1.4737466

Ciarán Murphy: Born on the right side of the border for Mayo, Colm Boyle will be missed
A thunderous footballer, the Devitts clubman hails from a curious part of the GAA world
about an hour ago




I know a family who live on the Galway side of that divide. A significant minority of the family members are maniacal Mayo supporters. The Milltown people I know speak about Ballindine as if it's on another planet entirely. I find it all very amusing.

A few years ago I was up in a pub in Leanne and they were talking about Mayo people like they had 2 heads (and the Mayo border about 1/4 mile away)

Rossfan

Have they not got 2 :o

Paddy Cunningham of Antrim.
Davy's given us a dream to cling to
We're going to bring home the SAM