“IT’S BEEN A long time coming.
“We’re just delighted to have got here.”
Cian Smith is referring to the absence for over nine decades since Boyle GAA club graced Roscommon county senior football final day.
1927 to be exact, the last time that this build-up of excitement visited their town just off the N4, a community in north Roscommon wedged in between the borders with Sligo and Leitrim.
They won that title 95 years ago, the wait to sample such an occasion again has been exhausting for the club.
The current group have had to be patient themselves in trying to make the breakthrough, knocking hard on a semi-final door that refused to open.
Last four defeats visited them in 2016 and 2017, then again in 2019 to Padraig Pearses and in 2020 to St Brigid’s, the two eventual county champions. Last year they lost a quarter-final to a Pearses team that bounded on to win Connacht.
In Boyle, they wondered when it would be their turn?
“We were getting beaten by the top teams,” says Smith.
“I took over the senior team last year and my aim was to get back to a semi-final and to perform in a big game. We haven’t felt we have played to our potential at times.”
Their manager kept the faith in this team.
It’s not a role he envisaged for himself at the age of 34.
The surname has become synonymous with Roscommon football. Donie and Enda Smith have been mainstays of the senior setup for some time.
But their older brother was the trail-blazer, Cian part of the Roscommon minor team that gifted their county a golden summer in 2006 that culminated with an All-Ireland win over Kerry in Ennis.
Then life threw him a curveball. It started off as a sore throat in the autumn of 2007 that was causing hoarseness. His father is an auctioneer and sold a house to an A&E consultant in Sligo, who used to visit them occasionally. One evening while calling he noticed Cian’s voice and suggested a check up.
After a hospital visit, an infection of cells in his throat was detected. The diagnosis was throat cancer and an operation was required to remove half his voicebox. He needed radiotherapy until February 2008 but came through it and returned to the pitch.
That year he scored a goal in a county intermediate final draw against Kilbride before they lost the replay. Amends were made in 2013 with Enda midfield, Cian centre-forward and Donie full-forward, a Smith spine to a Boyle team that lifted the Roscommon title that elevated the club to senior ranks.
Breathing difficulties were starting to impact Cian on the pitch and he was being forced down the road to hang up his boots.
In November 2014 a testimonial for him in Abbey Park in Boyle featured Roscommon footballers from an array of vintages. Over €10,000 was raised, shared out between the Mayo-Roscommon Hospice and the Kyle Casey fund.
But if his playing involvement had to be curtailed, the passion for Gaelic football was too deep-rooted for him to separate himself from the sport.
His coaching CV is impressive. Mark Dowd and John Rodgers, two Strokestown stalwarts who will be in opposition to him in Dr Hyde Park on Sunday, pulled him in to help out with Roscommon minor and U21 teams.
In 2019 he was over Coolera-Strandhill and steered them to the Sligo decider where they just found Tourlestrane too tough a nut to crack. The following year he was over Roscommon intermediate outfit Kilmore.
“That was a tough year with Covid but a really good experience for myself. Anyone that knows me, I’m mad into football. When I finished playing in ’14, I was a selector with Boyle and I was always going to go back and manage Boyle at some stage. I just needed to gain that experience.”
He moved further afield as well. Living in Dublin for years, he worked for Permanent TSB and was always grateful when he was ill to his area manager, Dublin great John O’Leary, and his manager Mick Moran, a staunch Mayo man.
Residence in the capital opened the door to time with the DIT Sigerson Cup side.
“We were beaten by UL in the Sigerson quarter-final in 2017. A man by the name of Gearoid Hegarty single-handedly beat us, he’s an outrageous hurler but he’s not far off that quality footballer either.
“We had a decent team. Conor Madden from Cavan, Conor O’Shea from Mayo, Ciaran Thompson from Donegal, Shane Clayton from Dublin, really good players. Again that all helped me in coaching.”
By the start of 2021, his home club was calling. He moved back to Boyle in 2019, working with his father in the auctioneering business.
Cian and his wife Michelle have two children now, Cillian is four and Grace is two.
His family are embedded in the club, it governs the rhythms of their life. In 2019 they were recognised with the Dermot Earley family honour at the GAA President’s awards in Croke Park, a tribute to the years of work Mike and Mary Smith had put into football in their locality, and the devotion to the game they had infused in their sons.
“Look as a family we’re all big into the football. We all love it but first and foremost for us, the club is the most important. We’ll support Roscommon always but really the club is that extra little bit special.
“Dad is a former player, was on the executive, he was secretary when he was in his twenties. My mother was secretary and treasurer for years. So we’re all in it.”
Still he had to mull over the decision to take the Boyle managerial reins. There were friendships with members of the dressing-room to consider, family connections to take into account.
“It had to come into it. Aside from Donie and Enda, I’d be very close as well to Sean Purcell, Mark O’Donohoe, Roch Hanmore and I would have played with a lot of the other lads. I spoke to the lads, ‘I’m going to manage Boyle, if you’re happy to have me.’
“It had to be we’re friends, but when I’m manager, I’m manager.
“To be honest with you, there’s been absolutely no issues. The lads know exactly where I stand, where they stand. That was the biggest thought process around it.
“I absolutely love being involved. I love the planning and organising. I love the coaching and the management.”
The position has offered him a link to football at a high level. After being fitted with a tracheostomy tube to help him breathe and speak, it may have been viewed as a barrier to communicating his coaching message but Smith has adapted and makes it work.
“I’ve taken a little step back this year from the coaching. Damien Tiernan and Conor McGowan, who are with me as two selectors, they have done more of the coaching this year. I’ve done more management, it’s worked out well. I just found last year, I was trying to do too much and you can’t do everything.”
A sharp eye for detail and planning is needed. The Boyle squad is scattered around the country. Midweek sessions are held in Bunbrosna, the Westmeath club near Mullingar that is roughly equidistant between Boyle and Dublin.
“Our lads are based all over. We have six or seven starters in Dublin between work and college. Then we’ve guys in Galway. Daire Cregg is in Charleville in Cork, he’s on placement from college, he’s doing agri-business. Daire doesn’t come up midweek, he comes up at the weekends.
“Bunbrosna are absolutely fantastic, great facilities. They’re very accommodating.”
It has all helped the talent in the Boyle ranks to flourish. Sean Purcell is a defender with county experience. Donie and Enda, and Cian McKeon played in this summer’s Connnacht senior final. Daire Cregg was Roscommon’s top scorer in the 2021 All-Ireland U20 final.
“I personally think the split season is brilliant,” says Cian.
“Inter-county footballers and hurlers, they’re all good athletes, they all mind themselves. I think the biggest thing is the benefit is the mental side of it, where they’re fully tuned in with the county for x amount of months and then they can switch off and then they’re into the club.”
Boyle started slowly in their recent semi-final against St Brigid’s but remained composed. Donie booted home a first-half penalty to the net and was at the heart of the string of points in the second-half that enabled them to pull clear.
Donie Smith with a smasher of a point to put @BoyleGAA ahead with 3 minutes to play pic.twitter.com/r8XrC9hCUa
— Brian Carroll (@bcarroll17) October 9, 2022
The importance of the breakthrough hit home.
“It’s really starting to sink in now. I suppose on the pitch after the semi-final, there was a couple of people from the club in their ’70s, who have seen it all. former chairmen, presidents and for them, I met them after the game, it really meant so much to them.”
The town has been festooned in maroon and white since then.
The Roscommon championship has been monopolised by the southern triumvirate of Padraig Pearses, St Brigid’s and Clann na nGael. Between them they have won the last 12 titles. Only twice since 2001 has a final not featured at least one of those clubs.
Strokestown haven’t contested a final in 20 years, winning that 2002 edition. They form a pairing with Boyle that is dripping with novelty.
Sunday is a day of sporting significance then.
The following weekend will bring another major event. Donie is getting married in Portugal. There will be an exodus of Boyle players, management and supporters next week, all flying to Quinta do Lago.
Lifting the Fahey Cup would be a great way to start the week’s celebrations.
I don’t blame the counties. I blame the GAA for the ridiculous scheduling. They should at a minimum a two break between the league final and a county first championship game.
@Diarmuid: Yep. I think they’re changing it to 2 weeks next year alright as the group games in the Championship will be replaced with the qualifiers again which work better I think…