‘The magic power that comes from a tiny place’

Inny Under 14s won the overall prize at this year’s Westmeath Examiner Community and Sports awards. Garry Doyle, the All-Ireland winning team’s joint-manager, tells the bittersweet story of a year when triumph and tragedy mixed

There is an old saying in sport that success has a thousand fathers. With us, in 2024/25, it was different. Success had a thousand mothers. They were the ones who were always there to pick up the pieces on the bad days or pick up the dirty linen on every other day.

Just as they were the ones who convinced younger siblings that a four-hour round trip to watch their older brother play a game of football was a fun day out.

Here an unwritten contract existed where mothers filled gear bags, lunch boxes and water bottles and children filled hearts with pride.

Right now, the 17 boys who comprised the Inny Under 14 squad of 2024/25 may not be fully aware of the scale of their sporting achievements.

So, the following sentences may help. On a national scale, only two soccer teams from Westmeath have ever won a national knockout championship. The first, in 1924, was Athlone Town.

That summer five of the Athlone players who lifted the FAI Cup represented Ireland in the Paris Olympics.

No one club has ever provided as many starters for an Irish international game since. Not Liverpool. Not Manchester United. Nor Arsenal. Not Celtic.

That’s how good that particular Athlone Town team were, good enough to see five players reach an Olympic quarter-final, where they crashed out 2-1 after extra time to the Netherlands.

It took another 101 years for the next Westmeath male soccer team to win a national knockout cup: Inny’s Under 14s.

Think about that and then consider this. The Under 14 SFAI Cup had only ever left Dublin on five previous occasions and each time the winning team was from either a city or a large town. No village team had ever done it.

Yet there is a reason we did.

We’re moulded by what we grow up in. For us, it’s the hills, the fields, the community and no one should ever underestimate the magic power that comes from being from a tiny place.

Step on a football pitch with that background and an opportunity comes with it, the chance to let players from faraway places know exactly who you are and where you are from. In 2025, thousands of football people discovered the Inny name.

One day, late in the season, the leading side from Dublin, St Joseph’s Boys, were drawn to play us in the SFAI quarter-final. They’re known nationwide as Joeys. Approximately five per cent of the professional players in today’s League of Ireland have come through their club.

And because of that reputation, some of the Inny boys felt threatened. We heard one of them say we would lose 5-0.

We weren’t going to accept that. The game was being played on our soil, Westmeath soil. The least we could do was scrap for every ball, put our hearts and souls into it. “Remember who you are,” we said to the boys. We left it at that. There was a nice silence in the dressing room.

Who knows precisely what thoughts went through their young minds in the moments before they left for the pitch? Was it gratitude to their parents for rushing home so often from work to make sure they got to training on time? Was it an awareness of the time and money their parents had invested to give them a chance to play the game they love? Was it a deep-rooted sense of pride in their place? Or was it one of those crossroads moments where you stare fear in the face but make a secret pact with yourself to do your best in defiance of that?

We’ll never know the answer. What we do know is we played the game of our lives. We won 2-1. Joeys went on to win the league and cup double in Dublin. We went on to win the Connacht Cup, the first team from our league to do so. We also retained our league championship and won the Longford Cup.

And then a couple of months later, we won the SFAI Cup, an All-Ireland competition.

If only the story could end there. If only it was solely a season of triumph.

But tragically it wasn’t.

On 15 February we were preparing for a game against Sligo Rovers. Tommy Keena, my fellow team manager, phoned. He had terrible news to tell. Shane Lawlor, father of our left winger, Cian, had died from a cardiac arrest.

There’s shock and then there’s shock.

That day numbed us.

Shane was a young man. He was active, a runner, and was in the prime of his life when it was taken away from him. And he was taken away from Orla, his wife; from Niamh, his daughter; from Cian, his son; as well as from his parents, his siblings, his family, his friends.

He was one of us, someone who wanted his best for his children and you could see the absolute love he had for them. It was there in every facial expression and gesture.

We have thought about him every day since.

The 17 boys in the squad thought of Cian instantly. “How can we help?” they asked. “What can we do?”

They were there for their pal on the day of his father’s funeral. And that’s what winning looks like. It isn’t about a scoreline or a trophy. It is about being part of a community and looking out for one other.

When we were nominated for team of the year by the Westmeath Examiner, we were thrilled. When we attended the day and saw the other award categories, we were humbled. How could we compare with the Carers of the Year, those selfless heroes who give their lives to help others?

So, for us to win the overall prize was a surprise, a lovely recognition for the boys’ accomplishments.

But it wouldn’t have happened without the mams and the dads who made the conscious decision to buy in to this hopeful dream and pack their cars Saturday after Saturday to drive around the country, wearing out the roads and motorways of Ireland as we journeyed to matches in nine different counties.

Along the way, we discovered that success does indeed have a thousand fathers. And mothers. And aunts, uncles, grandparents, brothers and sisters.

The reason the team won four trophies, including a national title, didn’t come down to 11 players on a football pitch. It came down to a community being with us.

That was our secret. It may have been 11 versus 11 inside the white lines but beyond the perimeter fence we knew we had the forcefield of our people roaring us on. Once you have that, no one can stop you.

At some point in the future, we will reflect on those days, and recall that cavalcade of cars heading out of Westmeath and Longford towards far-off towns. We will remember the matches and the smiles.

But most of all we will remember the five family members we lost in 2024/25; Marie Doyle, Shane Lawlor, Kevin Orme, Johnno O’Farrell – who was a dedicated and magnificent supporter of the team – and Tom Keena. It’s also remiss not to also mention each family member the players lost before the 2024/25 season, those grandparents, aunts and uncles who would have loved to have been told about their grandchildren and nephews achievements.

All of which brings us back to the dressing room prior to the game against Joeys and that request to ‘remember who you are’.

They did. They thought then of those loved ones who went before us.

May they all rest in peace.