Former Kildare footballer Johnny Doyle is still a major star for Allenwood who are back in the senior championship.
AT 46, JOHNNY Doyle already considers himself to be on borrowed time in this racket. At some point, the walls will cave in and the game will be up.Something will happen to make the decision for him. The body won’t permit him to do it anymore. Or maybe the manager will be the one to call the time of death on his career? You’ve had your turn and now it’s time to make way for the younger calves.“Oh here comes the pensioner,” they sometimes say, treating the age gap with their veteran with humour.
Advertisement “No more than the reason I played last year: I’m enjoying it,” he says when asked why he’s still on the road. A low injury count is one aspect of his theory. He never broke a bone or even experienced the pain of a hamstring twinge. Drinking a lot of milk, his mother reckons, helped with that. He was raised on the white stuff. His diet is generally good, although he won’t deny himself an occasional visit to the chipper. Give or take a pound here or there, he’s the same weight as he was when he was playing with Kildare.
“You’d fire the bag so many times in the corner and say, ‘That’s it. What am I wasting my time for?’” Doyle says when recalling those tougher moments. “We could have lost both of them in normal time so it is a fine line,” says Doyle. Allenwood then blitzed Dublin’s Scoil Uí Chonail for four goals in the final to deliver a second major trophy for the club in as many months.“When you’re in a competition and you don’t know too much about the opposition, it becomes about what you’re going to do as a team, and working to your strengths. We chased that best performance every day we went out.
Club Values Gaelic Football Johnny Doyle Kildare GAA Veteran Star
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