Colm Boyle: Bringing Mayo stars home from Dublin has helped county compete again

Selector Colm Boyle during the Mayo GAA Football Pre-All-Ireland Senior Final media conference at Hastings Insurance MacHale Park in Castlebar, Mayo.

When Andy Moran and his right-hand man Colm Boyle made it their priority to get the Mayo public back supporting the team, they identified that meant getting more of the team back living in Mayo.

In the fight for inches Mayo had been continuing to give up yards by having so many players still based in Dublin, and tolerating all the compromising that all that commuting was having on players’ recovery. And then people were wondering why Mayo in recent years were losing so many close games and not getting back to Croke Park.

“I remember when we had a press night here after Andy was appointed, I was asked about winning an All-Ireland and stuff like that,” says Boyle. “And my response was that first of all you have to earn the right to compete. And realistically over the last couple of years we hadn’t won enough games at the right time of year to be talking about winning All-Irelands or anything like that.

“So we’ve had to earn the right to compete, and some of that is due to maybe sacrifices made along the way over the year and just how much boys have been really willing to buy into what you're trying to do.

“Like, we had a lot of lads in Dublin around the time we took the job. And we picked up the phone to them and said, ‘Look, we need you down home if you’re going to play for Mayo and get the best out of yourself.’ 

“Obviously you’re careful who you’re asking. Everyone’s situation is different. But you’re tapping into the guys who you feel would be better if they were living at home and circumstances allowed them to work in Mayo.

“Enda Hession [a primary school teacher] is an obvious example. He was down within a week of us ringing him. And look at the football he’s playing now.

Enda Hession of Mayo during the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship semi-final match between Mayo and Louth at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile

“We felt there was a cohort of boys like that. And they’ve bought into it, they’ve made the sacrifices. Little things like that along the way – it helps everyone, it helps the group. You're looking for inches all the time. And we’ve been winning games at the right time of year and it’s led us to where we are now.” 

Boyle is well familiar with this juncture, just as he was with making sacrifices during his own playing career. Moran could have chosen from a whole dressing room of former teammates and All-Stars for someone to be his right-hand man but he chose Boyle.

“Sometimes a journey has a totem,” Moran wrote in his 2020 book, Andy: Lessons Learned. “And if the theme of our journey was resilience, one of its greatest embodiments was Colm Boyle. Deemed too small and too light for the modern game, Boyler was shunted aside and had to wait three years to be recalled. Far from wallowing, Colm had used his time away to add serious physicality to his game. Once he was back on the team, he went on to win four All-Stars over the next six seasons.” 

Boyle also togged out in seven All-Ireland finals upon his return, starting in five. Mayo didn’t win any of them but he garnered a lot of experience from them which inform his and Mayo’s outlook this Sunday.

“Something I would have learned over the years is that a lot of the stuff in terms of the build-up is complete nonsense,” says Boyle. “The only things that are different about an All-Ireland final is that there’s maybe a bit more pressure, yes, and there’s a handshake before the game with the President and the opposition players. That’s it. Everything else is the same, really.”

Mayo themselves have changed – improved – of the course of this summer. In three of their four games in provincial grounds they gave up two goals but since hitting Croke Park have conceded none. The same at the other end of the field; after scoring only three goals over the course of their first six games, they raided Louth the last day for three.

“That had been one of our frustrations leading into [the Louth game]. A lot had been made about the goal chances we were conceding but we were creating a hell of a lot of goal chances ourselves in those games which really wasn’t getting mentioned. Just our conversion percentage was really low. So that was something we went after [against Louth] and to score three goals was great.

“The defensive side of it, I’m not going to say we’re a new team because that would be stretching it too far, but a lot of the guys hadn’t really played together. We played a challenge match against Kildare a couple of weeks before the Monaghan game and it was the first time we had any semblance of the team that would play against Monaghan. So was everything going to be perfect straight away? Absolutely no way.

“What are we doing better now? People will always come back to structures and personnel and stuff like that, but I think a lot of it is mindset. I always felt myself that if my mindset was good in a defensive situation, you were reading situations better, that second earlier. Sometimes it looks like your defending was brilliant, but all you were doing was seeing something before it almost happened.

“And I think a lot of boys are just reading situations an awful lot better. Some of our defending and tackling has been excellent. Though against Louth, they had a lot more shots than what we conceded in the last couple of games. So that’s obviously an area we need to work on with our next opposition in mind.”