Amy Boyle Carr still chuckles at the memory of that April evening in Tallaght four years ago when the Republic of Ireland played the Netherlands in a World Cup qualifier.
“I don’t even know where my head was at,” she says. “It was all very surreal.”
That morning she went for a walk with team-mates Louise Quinn and Tyler Toland.
“Louise was saying ‘you could be starting tonight’. I just laughed at her. ‘There’s no way.’ It didn’t even enter my head. I didn’t even expect to be on the bench. So I got my Mum to get me a ticket for the game so I could watch it from the stands.”
Come kick-off, her seat was empty because she was out on the pitch winning her first senior cap, Colin Bell reckoning the 17-year-old was more than ready.
“When he told me, I didn’t really know what to do, I just felt like I’d be so out of my depth. But he said I deserved it for the way I had trained. But, God yeah, surreal,” she laughs.
Her progression through the ranks had been seamless enough, having played at schools level right up to the under-17s under Bell. That senior call-up led her to make the decision that so many of her fellow county women have made, among them Amber Barrett and Ciara Grant from the current squad, to call time on playing Gaelic football with Donegal to concentrate on soccer instead.
“I felt like that’s where my focus had to be, it was too big an opportunity. They had put so much trust in me as well, I was only young, so I just kind of felt I had to go with that. I felt like I was doing right, but you wouldn’t believe how much it hurt.”
When she got home the day she quit the Donegal panel, she dissolved in to tears.
“I don’t know, I just realised that being part of Donegal meant so much to me. Making that decision took a lot out of me. Yeah, I was kind of heartbroken.
“My home town Glenties is a big Gaelic town, you don’t hear too much about soccer. And just being part of something close to home meant a lot. And coming from a Gaelic town it’s Gaelic players who are your idols, more so than soccer players. As a kid growing up, it was Karl Lacey I pretended to be when I was out playing. And then the girls on the Donegal team, they were the ones I looked up to.”
“But I just kept telling myself that it was for the better, I was giving myself better opportunities with the Irish team. It was like that was the decision I was expected to make. But as the months went on . . . I remember going to Donegal’s first championship game in Healy Park in Omagh, days like that, it just hurt that I wasn’t part of it.”
Great stories
Later in 2018, she was asked if she’d come back on the Donegal panel. She didn’t hesitate. You followed your heart?
“That was it. I went back with Donegal and I never left.”
So, instead of preparing for Tuesday night’s World Cup qualifier in Gothenburg, the 21-year-old is buzzing at the prospects of representing her county in Sunday’s National League final against reigning All-Ireland champions Meath, both counties hunting their first ever Division One title.
And Meath are no little inspiration to Boyle Carr and her team-mates whose burning ambition is to win Donegal’s first senior All Ireland.
“It’s terrible to say it, but you wouldn’t even have considered Meath before last year, they’d only come up from intermediate. I couldn’t believe how they beat Cork in the semi-final, the way they came back so late, but you just thought surely, surely they couldn’t beat Dublin. When they won it, it just threw everything up in the air, it gives every county hope. It was one of the great stories.”
The counties haven’t met in a senior competitive game since 2016, before Boyle Carr’s time, and each have reached just one Division One final, both losing to Cork, Meath in the dim and distant past of 2006, Donegal in 2017.
Comeback-wise, Donegal did a bit of a Meath in their semi-final against Dublin when they trailed by four points with three minutes to go, before two late, late goals gave them a rare enough win over the reigning league champions.
“It was always Dublin we could never get past, we always knew we had the tools to beat them, but on the day we never put it together. It’s a bit like that with the championship, every year we set out to win the All Ireland, and every year we feel like it’s ourselves to blame, silly mistakes and stuff like that.
“But there’s so much belief in the squad this year, we feel like the panel is the best we’ve had in a long time, maybe ever. Everyone’s so positive, working together, we all want the same thing, to win the All Ireland. Games like the Dublin game and getting to the league final only improves you and makes you feel you’re making progress.”
Having only turned 21 in January, there’s plenty of time yet for Boyle Carr to reassess her sporting choices, and she’s not dismissing the notion of giving soccer a go again. Sligo Rovers’ inclusion in this season’s National League makes playing club football at the top level a more workable prospect.
“They’re just down the road, so having a team a bit closer to home is brilliant. The closest team before would have been Galway, and that’s an awful journey down.”
“I keep telling myself that the opportunity will still be there for me, I’m young, if I want to make it that badly I’ll put in the work for it. I wouldn’t rule it out in the future.”
But for now, you only have eyes for Donegal?
“One hundred per cent.”
