Doyle finishes on his terms

Last Sunday evening, after beating Westmeath, Johnny Doyle told his Kildare team-mates he was retiring and that he wanted them to make him regret his decision by winning the Leinster championship.

It was an emotional moment at the end of a 14-year county career that may not have been entirely trophy laden but was more noteworthy for the amount of neutrals who praised his special talents.

Another difficult moment came on the local KFM radio station yesterday afternoon when, during a remarkable 90-minute tribute programme, his mother spoke of her pride in his achievements.

But, according to the man himself, the most difficult part to pulling down the curtains on his career was informing his father, Harry, that the time had come.

Doyle revealed: “He said to me, ‘I think you are wrong, there is more in you.

“But I respect your decision’. He has been just unbelievable, the time and sacrifice.

“You don’t properly realise the influence you have as a parent, like, I had so many bad games, so many games as a young lad when I came home and said, ‘that’s it, I’m never going back down there, they took me off, they didn’t give me a run’.

“But I was always encouraged to go back at it, get back up on the horse again, go again.”

All five managers that Doyle worked under in Kildare, including Mick O’Dwyer who handed the Allenwood club man his debut in 2000, spoke about the man they came to admire. Kieran McGeeney, in charge when Doyle picked up his All Star award in 2010, summed it up best.

“I have only come across maybe two or three players in that sort of class of work ethic,” said McGeeney. “I think it was coming to the end (of Doyle’s career), one particular year when I sort of asked him to rest himself.

“The first question Johnny said was, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Well, the older you get, you have to watch the legs’.

“He said, ‘Don’t you worry about my legs’. That was Johnny.

“His work ethic led to those skills that everybody has seen in Croke Park and Newbridge but, believe me, there was nobody that worked harder than Johnny.

“Even in the last year, I was over in America for five or six weeks, I rang back to see how everything was going. Somebody told me that Eoin Doyle had beaten Johnny in one of the runs. So I texted Johnny with a bit of slagging. ‘Oh, I hear Doyle beat you in one of the 150 metre runs’. He text back saying, ‘That’s the last time that’ll happen’. And true to his word, it didn’t happen again. It was those sort of things I liked about Johnny Doyle.”

Doyle took an unusual route to retirement, appearing as a sub against Westmeath last weekend in the Allianz League at St Conleth’s Park in Newbridge before confirmingimmediately afterwards his plans to step away.

He admitted that his gut instinct was to retire when his old boss McGeeney departed after last year’s All-Ireland Championship.

“Siobhan (wife) would have said to me, ‘Go back, it’d be terrible to be wondering what might have been’,” Doyle revealed.

“I suppose I would have been the one in the dressing room for years talking about commitment and giving the responsibility that you had to the Kildare jersey.

“I’d have been saying, ‘You can’t afford to give it anything less than 100%’.

“I would have been the one pulling a lad aside to say, ‘There’s more in you, we’re not getting the best out of you’. So then when it doesn’t fit you, you have to be honest to yourself but also to Jason and the team, that if you can’t give it what it deserves and what it needs to be given, it’s just time to step away.”