FOR THE FIRST day or two after Strokestown’s Roscommon football final win – courtesy of Tony Lavin’s fairytale stoppage time winning point – Colin Compton didn’t want to know about the AIB Connacht championship.
It had taken 20 long years to get back to the county summit and everybody at the club, including Compton, was determined to celebrate it. To put the passing of all that time into context, the soon to be 31-year-old Garda recalls being visited whilst in primary school by the previous Strokestown team to have won the Roscommon championship, in 2002.
So while this Sunday’s provincial semi-final date with the Galway champions – Moycullen as it turned out – had already been pencilled in, it wasn’t something anyone in Strokestown was giving much thought to.
“I’d have said I don’t want to know about it,” admitted Compton of his initial reaction.
A few of the local die-hards were still partying hard and telling war stories on the Tuesday after beating Boyle – Compton jokes that super substitute Lavin’s week in particular was ‘a big one!’ – but by the following Saturday, they were all back out on the field and they put themselves through a punishing session that morning.
A couple of weeks on, the flame is alight again and there is a burning ambition to emulate the Strokestown team of 2002 who reached the Connacht final.
“We had a good hard session, the lads brought us back down to ground,” said former Roscommon forward Compton of that first session back. “This is a huge opportunity for us and we want to grasp it. I’ve been playing with the senior team for 14 years and these opportunities don’t come around too often. We know as a group that when you get into these positions, you have to give it everything you have.”
Compton has done just that for well over a decade, answering his club’s call – and for a while the county’s too – despite working as a Garda Siochana member in far off Dundalk. It was his work commitments that ultimately forced the 2017 and 2019 Connacht SFC medallist with Roscommon to knock county football on the head.
“I remember Anthony Cunningham asking me back in for the 2020 season and I just didn’t have it in me at the time,” said Compton. “I had a path worn up and down. I just couldn’t commit to it. It’s not only the travelling, it’s all the planning. You have to plan to get people to cover work, trying to look for leave on this or that day.”
Yet he continues to make the sacrifices for his club. Why not simply get a club transfer?
“I’ve always been asked about transferring clubs through the years but at the same time, with the club, you are never going to transfer,” he said. “Your club is where you are from and nothing is going to change that.
“I have actually moved down to Dublin in the last year or so. I am travelling with the lads back to club training. But yeah, for five or six years there in Dundalk I was on my own over and back.”
The eventual reward of a county senior medal made it all worthwhile for the 2012 All-Ireland U-21 finalist with Roscommon. The present group of Strokestown players can say they are on a par with that class of 2002 now. They might even go one better yet if they claim the Connacht title.
“That was a great Crossmolina team that beat them,” said Compton, referencing Strokestown’s 2002 provincial final defeat.
“It was a serious Crossmolina team and Strokestown gave them lots of it, they weren’t far away. There’s a good pedigree in Roscommon club football. St Brigid’s won a couple of Connacht titles and eventually won an All-Ireland in 2013. Pearses won the Connacht title last year. We’re playing these teams and we’re competing with them and we’re beating them.”
Even Compton will acknowledge that it was a mightily close call against Boyle though. Lavin had only just come on when he coughed up possession, leading to a free that Boyle struck the equaliser from. Stalemate reigned until Lavin got the ball again and took a pot shot at glory, his right quad in such bother from an ongoing injury that he elected to shoot off his left.
“It’s something that I think every club player in the country can take great heart from,” said Compton of Lavin’s story.
“Tony hasn’t really kicked a ball for Strokestown’s senior team in the last two years between injuries and form and a couple of other things here and there, maybe just not getting picked.
“He was really on the outskirts of things and then to come on in the county final with three minutes to go, having not seen a minute of action all year, to kick the winning score off his left foot, considering his right quad was torn, it’s fairytale stuff. It’s a bit of an extraordinary story and something I think a lot of club players around the place would take great heart from.”
