by Daragh Ó Conchúir

Amy Boyle celebrates her 25th birthday today and the captain of the Antrim camogie team will hope to be celebrating tomorrow evening by leading her team to the top tier of the Very League with victory over Clare in the Division 1B final at the NGDC in Abbotstown (2pm throw-in, livestream on Camogie Association’s YouTube).

Getting to work three out of five days from home, in her job with AIB in Belfast, has been conducive to a smooth build-up to the game, as it is to the lifestyle of an inter-county camogie player in general.

And she is showing the benefits of it, driving her team forward as they have built steadily through the group phase to get to the decider.

It has been some turnaround for the Saffrons after a year to forget.

In 2021, Boyle and a young squad shone in Croke Park to win the All-Ireland intermediate title and two solid seasons at senior level followed. But managerial turmoil and the unavailability of a number of players left them hamstrung and they were relegated once more.

Carl McCormick and Martin Coulter took over the reins in difficult circumstances last term but with a full pre-season under their belts, they had their crew much better prepared this time around.

Turning a seven-point deficit around against senior side, Wexford in the first round of the League, despite being without the totemic Róisín McCormick, Caitrin Dobbin and Maeve Kelly through injury, infused them with a confidence that has brought them this far.

And it was a stark illustration of how far they had come.

“Last year we got beat by 52 points by them. So that was a 53-point turnaround. So the whole thing, each match, it’s just got better,” details Boyle with a touch of understatement.

“We’ve got a lot of younger players through the panel this year. And there’s been a few girls just couldn’t commit other years have come on board. You see the difference of having a real strong panel, which is maybe something the last couple of years, we’ve been really light on our numbers,

“We’ve 29 players this year, which is really making a difference in our training as well.

“The Wexford game showed there’s great fight within all the girls. They were three big names that were missing but in our panel, we weren’t even thinking, ‘Oh, them guys are missing,’ because it was just three other girls we knew would be well capable of stepping in, and  they have. Katie Molloy, Cassie McArthur, Janey McIntosh. Dervla Cosgrove (who hit an 84-second hat-trick and four goals in total when Antrim’s second string won the All-Ireland premier junior title in 2022) has taken over the frees this year.”

Last year was tough but Boyle was never going to desert the ranks just because there were no silver baubles going around.

“Yeah, it can be difficult. But I suppose when you have been on the panel a few years, you can see how rewarding it can be. Last year was maybe one of the more difficult years to be on the panel. But you remember back to 2021 when we did win the All-Ireland and you’re trying to let some of the younger girls that didn’t experience it know that that’s what inter-county can be.

“When I first come up onto the panel in 2017, straight out of minor, I think we were maybe struggling to field a lot the time intermediate, you know? And then just a few years later, we managed to win it. So hopefully for a lot of the younger girls, if they could experience that success too, it’d be nice for them.”

Operating at this level, weights are an important part of any conditioning programme now and as a diminutive player who has tended to do her best work in the hustle and bustle of the middle third, it is not something Boyle can afford to shirk. But it is definitely an area of the lifestyle the Loughgiel Shamrocks could leave just as easily as take.

“I think I’ve just had to come around to it,” she admits with a chuckle. “I’d still rather do the stick work and the running and stuff than the gym, which is maybe not my forte, but you have to do it. We seen that the couple of years in the senior championship how it stands to you.”

Playing regularly at the top level does too. Boyle has had a taste of that with Antrim. She has also with Loughgiel, who after a few years of pushing the brilliant Slaughtneil hard, have taken over primacy in Ulster as three-in-row victors.

They reached the 2022 All-Ireland final but were edged out in a thriller by Sarsfields. Operating in that rarefied atmosphere is the dream of any athlete and doing so consistently raises standards, which is why winning tomorrow would be so valuable to Antrim.

Boyle is quick to warn anyone against reading too much into her team’s 14-point defeat of Clare at Zimmer Biomet Páirc Chíosóg last Saturday. With both sides already qualified and resting lots of personnel, it was nothing but a good runout. The highlight for Antrim was that McCormick got 20 minutes into her legs and should be available to play some role tomorrow.

“We’re under no illusions that it’ll be a different Clare side we meet again. Clare have been a senior team now for a long time, they have plenty of experience. I actually know very little about them. I’ve never came across Clare. But as a senior team, they’ll bring a lot of physicality and strength, and they’ll be very skilful team, too. So we’re looking forward to the challenge.

“Nothing beats them tough matches. And I think even us playing now in the intermediate championship this year, playing in the Division 1B will really stand to us. We beat a lot of the teams that were playing in the senior so that’s the hope that next year, if we were to win on Saturday, that you’d get up and get that experience in 1A, and those matches would stand to you in the long term.”

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