By Kevin Egan

It wasn’t just the result that Martin Boyle was celebrating this afternoon at Bord na Móna O’Connor Park, where his young Derry footballers won the county’s fifth ever All-Ireland minor football title.

The Ballinascreen man felt that regardless of the result in this final, simply getting to this stage again, taking on Kerry in what turned out to be a remarkable game of incredibly high quality, proved that it’s not just at senior level where things are moving in the right direction in his native county.

“To be sharing the field with Kerry on All-Ireland final day tells us that we’re doing something right. We genuinely mean that because at underage, Kerry are the standard bearers. We all love Kerry football” he said after the game.

“To be competing in an All-Ireland final is massive, and to finish on the right side of the result is a big fillip for the county in terms of coaching. It gives everybody a boost because what it means is that what we’re doing at schools level and at underage level is right, because we are producing good players”.

By the end of the game, it was utter chaos on the field as first Kerry and then Derry scored goals that changed the likely outcome of the game over and back. The sense of heartbreak in the stadium was palpable when Maurice O’Connell toe-poked in his goal at the start of stoppage time, but that sense of panic wasn’t shared on the Derry sideline, according to Boyle.

“I was turning around, chatting to one of my selectors, trying to make a sub, and I never saw it. Honest to God, I never flinched because I knew that character that’s in these boys and they’ve shown that time and again.

“We probably had a bit of an advantage because we came through a really tough Ulster campaign. Tyrone, Armagh, Monaghan, then on to Meath and Kerry, I don’t know if there’s ever been a harder All-Ireland won, so that definitely stood to us. We did feel that when it came down to the wire, if we could just stay in touch we’d have a chance, because the boys believed that they could go to the well at the end.

There was still time for more tension even after the goals, and Boyle admitted that when Cian McMahon stood over the last free at the very end, even though it was an incredibly difficult opportunity out on the left wing, he was mentally preparing to go for another 20 minutes.

“I was on my first decade of the rosary to be honest! I fully expected it to go over the bar, and at that stage, your mind was swinging around to extra time” he recalled.

Derry’s strong senior performance against Donegal was also cited as part of a bigger picture in the county, a point with which Boyle readily agreed.

“There’s a lot more positivity about, the county’s a lot more joined up in terms of support. People see that there’s a lot of good work going on, structures are good, and everybody’s getting behind the wheel which is really good. We feel that the senior team is going to be competitive in Ulster in the next ten years and hopefully beyond Ulster. With a few of these lads coming in to it and a few lads from the U-20s, it’s exciting times” he concluded.