TO BEGIN WITH, a request that feels more like a demand.
“Absolutely no photos from Ibiza. There are some dodgy ones that will be staying in a folder with a pass lock.”
Seán Boyd is either deadly serious or half-joking.
It’s hard to tell.
Luke Byrne is the man who knows him best in the Shelbourne dressing room. He is four years Boyd’s senior and they share the kind of bond in the game that is rare.
“I’m hard on him and apologise for the way I speak to him sometimes. It’s not because he is younger than me and I treat him like a kid, it’s because I see that there is 30 or 40 per cent more in Sean and he could be the best striker in the league in another couple of years,” Byrne explains.
It was at Shamrock Rovers that the pair first came across each other in the same dressing room, Boyd breaking through from the club’s burgeoning academy to score against Bohemians 24 hours after signing his first professional contract in the summer of 2016.
He was 17 and ready to take on the world.
Byrne was fighting a battle with his own body at this point, a cruciate knee ligament injury ruling him out for exactly 365 days not long after celebrating his 21st birthday.
Their friendship has been strengthened by shared adversity, understanding of sacrifice, strength in each other’s family, as well as a love of the game that cannot be worn down.
They meet The42 in Dublin city centre on the Tuesday before today’s FAI Cup semi-final away to Waterford.
Shels manager Damien Duff has given them the day off but that does not mean work is off the agenda.
Boyd is a samples administrator at a nearby Penneys, overseeing some of the products the company’s buyers procure from the homeware department.
Byrne is a business development executive in The Baby Academy, working from his home in north Dublin during the mornings before training, then splitting his time between the office in afternoons.
A juggling act that is a harsh necessity.
Today offers the opportunity to ensure 2022 will end with the chance of silverware at the Aviva Stadium next month.
But their stories until this point can be told through those pictures of hardship and struggle, circumstances most footballers can relate to.
***
Byrne picks up the story behind the picture (above) of one of his first games in the Bohemians first-team against Sligo Rovers in 2013.
“That was a very different time,” he laughs. “Times have changed drastically since then because I was an attacking full back in those days.
“What was a big thing for me to get in the team early was that I was physically developed, I worked in the gym. It doesn’t look it by my face but I was more developed.”
It was those attributes which went some way to convincing Stephen Bradley to throw Boyd into his team in the early stages of his reign at Rovers.
On 14 July 2016, Boyd signed his first professional contract along with Shane Hanney, James Doona and Aaron Dobbs.
The next day he scored a peach of a volley against Bohemians (pictured below) at Tallaght Stadium and after being showered with missiles when he decided to celebrate in front of his friends in the away end, he had an embrace with his father at full time.
Looking at the picture again brings the memories flooding back.
“I was training with the first team from early on,” he begins, before Byrne clarifies, “That’s only because you were thrown out of school.”
Boyd nips that in the bud. “No, no. That’s not true. I left school. I’ll tell you what happened…”
And so he explains how a teacher during a free class in secondary school insisted on him handing his mobile phone up to her.
Boyd refused. The vice principal got involved. Again, Boyd refused and his reasoning was simple.
“I needed it for the WhatsApp. All Rovers’ training information was in there, or details about meetings. I told them I needed it for work. I really regret it now, they said hand the phone over or leave [the school]. So I left, I never want back except for doing the Leaving Cert.
“It was stupid, I was in a bubble and didn’t take school seriously.”
When that goal went in against Bohs, it felt as if it was the start of something special.
I hugged my Dad because I knew it gave him a great sense of pride, he had been there for me every step of the way. My Mam, too, she gives me a hug before I leave for every match.
“But yeah, school, I should have dealt with that differently.”
Byrne knows all about errors of judgement in his youth. His just happened to make him Public Enemy No.1 among Bohs supporters, not to mention added scrutiny at new club Shamrock Rovers.
“Fucking Snapchat,” he sighs.
After informing Bohs of his decision to leave and telling them it was their fiercest rivals he would join, Byrne shook hands and departed with no ill-feeling.
Before the move was confirmed, he sent a picture holding some cash to some of the players in the messaging group as a joke. It was screengrabbed by a former teammate and put online after the transfer was finalised.
“It blew up, it ended up in the papers too,” he recalls. “It was a bad joke. I had €150 in my hand, not five grand! I met Trevor Croly (then Rovers manager) and was told to delete my social media accounts. It was not a good first impression and didn’t go down well at all.
I apologised to people at Bohs afterwards too, I never wanted them to think I would disrespect the club like that, and I’d like to think I have shown that’s not what I am about as a person or a player.
“You learn about trust and the people around you.”
He also learned more about himself when he ruptured his cruciate knee ligament in April 2016, returning to action (below) a year to the day from suffering the injury.
“Maybe it was the Snapchat thing in the back of my mind but I didn’t want to sit back and take the money for the year, and blow my bollox,” he insists.
“I took a satisfaction from punishing myself to get back fit, starving myself at times to keep the weight down. Doing three gym sessions a day to get stronger. Some of it wasn’t healthy but I was obsessed by getting back and not letting that injury finish me.
“It was the toughest year of my life but when I got back and two-footed Dano Byrne, who is one of my good friends, he laughed and said, ‘That’s you back now’. Until that point in my career, everything was on an upward trajectory.
“Then I remember someone saying to me, ‘Who do you think you are that nothing bad will ever happen to you in your career?’ Football owes us nothing and it’s not supposed to be easy.”
Boyd sits and listens and knows exactly where his pal is coming from.
His spark at Rovers fizzled out and he was released at the end of the 2019 campaign. He kept himself ticking over leading up to the PFA Ireland training camp for out of contract members that December.
Bohemians stalwart Derek Pender was manager and made him captain for a game in Rochdale a week before Christmas.
“After 10 or 12 minutes, I planted the knee the wrong way and heard it pop. I left the pitch crying, sobbing, not because of the pain but because I knew something was badly wrong,” he recalls of the incident below.
Yet the initial diagnosis in the hospital was far more positive.
“The nurse told me it was only a dislocation. But I was in bits. We were also rushing to make it back to the airport to fly home to Dublin. I remember being in this freezing cold room before going to the hospital, soaking wet and waiting for the ambulance.
“Colly [O’Connor, the Bohs kitman and member of the Irish Defence Forces] was with me in the room keeping me company. I was nearly having a panic attack worrying. I was trying to get through to home to let them know what happened.
“Then I’m on my phone and all these Bohs fans writing on Twitter, ‘Ah, delighted for him, fuck him, blah, blah, blah.’ Colly made me laugh by saying, ‘If only they could see the two of us here together’. But that moment maybe kickstarted my career in a sense. I was able to dedicate myself to the game more and work on parts of my body that had been neglected until then.”
As Boyd sought to rediscover his form with Finn Harps, Byrne was now a Shelbourne player, and the Covid-interrupted season of 2020 proved fateful in more than one sense.
Three red cards in his last four appearances – including one in the first half of the promotion/relegation final which they ended up losing to Longford Town – left him as bereft as any supporter.
He was captain and still has the picture of the red card being shown (below) saved in his phone.
“Just a massive, massive sense of guilt. I felt that I had blood on my hands because of that. When Ian [Morris] offered me a contract a week later and made me captain, I accepted straight away. I’d have no honour if I left.
“I was sitting in the stands – only people from the club were there because of Covid – and I couldn’t look them in the eye.”
It’s why the sense of relief a year later when they won the First Division was so palpable. But for Byrne, it was the chance to share the moment with his father, Paul.
“That summer he had been diagnosed with cancer. I’m sure so many people have heard that news about someone they love and the thoughts that go through your mind.
“I love the photo (below) because you can see he looks healthy and happy. He’s loving life. Like what Sean said about his Dad, you can see the pride.”
Boyd laughs.
“Paul is a legend. He’s in my DMs on Instagram all the time now sending me fishing videos and pictures. He’s trying to get me involved now too.”
Fishing and football are shared passions for Byrne and his father, although music is Paul’s first love, and one of his earliest bands, In Tua Nua, toured with U2.
And while he describes him as “my hero”, there are still testing moments.
“When I was at Rovers, [physio] Tony McCarthy who I got to know because I was always injured, asked me if Paul Byrne was my Dad. I said yeah, and he was laughing because he explained how he listened to my Dad’s band, went to see them live and had their CDs.
“Tony was joking that my Dad was giving an interview on the radio saying they were about to break America but he had to come home because his girlfriend at the time was pregnant. It wasn’t quite like that!”
Boyd adds: “We’re both lucky to have the families we do, to have that support, because it’s not there for everybody and it has been a big help for us. I have shin guards with pictures of two of my uncles on them – my Mam’s brothers.
“One of them – Michael Curley – died in 2013. I feel like by having those shin guards he is there with me on the pitch all the time. I was nominated for a player of the month recently and my Mam messaged me to say I was her player of the month every month.”
Both have different kinds of relationships with Damien Duff. Byrne was asked by the former Ireland international to be a support coach for Shamrock Rovers’ U15s when Duff was in charge during his time at the Hoops.
Between starting on his coaching badges, suffering the ACL injury, and talking about football with him at every opportunity before and after training, Duff felt it a good fit.
They were re-united at Shels’ U17s before he took the first-team job and asked Byrne to continue as captain for this season.
Boyd was a new signing during an off-season which saw the squad overhauled. Safety in midtable of the Premier Division has been secured in good time, meaning today’s FAI Cup semi-final could offer a route into European football.
“The manager wears one of those Whoop straps that tracks your heart rate. After games he will come in and tell us, ‘Fucking hell, my heart is going 90, I need to calm down’. But that’s who he is,” Boyd explains, examining the picture of the boss (above).
“He is an emotive person, passionate, and to be honest after a couple of days working with him, that stuff about who he is all goes away. Then it’s just who he is a person and coach. He cares about you, he is on you constantly to perform and give all you can and you either rise to that or now.
“Personally, now, I love it. Other players in the league talk to me and there is a huge attraction there, because is driven and passionate. It’s a dream, because he has put the trust in me and made me believe I am a danger, a threat, on the pitch.
“The way he is as a person and a coach, that gets me going.”
In more ways than one: Boyd has 14 goals in all competitions but has picked up 16 yellow cards and one red because of the manner in which he tries to lead from the front.
“But I believe the manger cares about me and will help me get better. I want to prove him right.”
It’s an effect Byrne explains simply. “He is an amazing man, he has had a huge influence on my life in general. He’s has done a lot for me in my life, how I think about football and things in general.
“He goes above and beyond for the people around him. No one gets an easy game against us. We don’t win every game but we would all genuinely die for the manager and his coaches.”
And now to today and a semi-final that, for two Manchester United supporters, also elicits memories of one of their first heroes in the game: Roy Keane, and his performance in Turin against Juventus in the 1999 Champions League last four.
“I was only one when that game happened but I can tell you everything about it,” Boyd laughs.
“I went into school the next day with my full United kit and a note explaining why I wasn’t wearing my uniform,” Byrne adds.
“Keane drove himself to a place he didn’t think was in him that night,” the Shels captain continues.
“It’s part of the reason you grow up loving football. Moments and stories like that. That’s why Sunday is just a case of winning by any means necessary.”
Only then could they begin to picture lifting the cup.
