Captain Joyce leads United to victory

FAMILY TIES Westport Utd captain Kevin ‘Kipper’ Joyce and his father SeΡn are pictured just after the game ended.?Pic: Michael McLaughlin

Joyce leads by example


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Daniel Carey

WESTPORT United captain Kevin Joyce took hold of the Connacht Junior Cup trophy at Terryland Park, Galway last Sunday and announced: “It’s been a while waiting, but she’s coming home finally!”
Twenty-five years had elapsed since the Coveys landed the famous piece of provincial silverware. For a group of players who have won national and domestic honours, the Connacht Cup had been the one that got away. Until now.
“This is the one we always wanted,” Joyce told The Mayo News in the dressing room corridor afterwards, noting that the older players in the team have “the full set” as a result.
“We’ve won all the club medals that we can win,” he continued. “It eluded us for so many years. I don’t know how … we hadn’t got to a [Connacht Cup] final, even, this team, so … we had serious ambitions of winning it.”
Those ambitions were realised as the goalkeeping heroics of Gary Cunningham paved the way for a penalty shoot-out victory. Joyce, the man known as ‘Kipper’, scored the winning spot kick.
“I wasn’t feeling any nerves,” he explains. “I just said [to myself]: ‘Look it, pick your spot before you go up, put the ball down, and hit it as hard as you can into that corner’. And thankfully it came off.
“The manager had decided who was going to take the penos. He said the buck [stopped] with him – ‘if we don’t do it, we don’t do it; if we do, so be it’. He had an idea who he wanted to take the penos, so we went with it.”
In his post-match speech, Joyce hailed managers Kieran Mulchrone and James Fahy for putting “life back into Westport United”. Asked how what looked like being a transition phase has resulted in silverware, the Everton fan turns to a defeat to explain things.
“Funnily enough, I think getting knocked out of the [FAI] Junior Cup against S&F in the early stages gave us a break. It gave us a couple of months break, and when James and Kieran came to us … the hunger came back into it, they just got everybody up. No one’s place was assured. New lads came in, young lads, and to get everyone playing at the top of their game again … The hunger was back. Fair play to them. We needed someone like them to come in and help out.”
Not that victory came easy. Wind and rain played their part, and while spectators sheltered in the stand, the stand-in captain and his team-mates were exposed to the full brunt of the elements.
“It was a battle right down to the end, so we’re absolutely over the moon,” he confirms. “Every time you got the ball, there was someone straight on you. It was a very intense game. We felt we were on top. We played well. To win it on penalties … it’s a lottery in the end. But we’re delighted with the win.”
And he also hailed the huge number of fans who travelled from Westport for the day, saying: “We have about ten times as many supporters as everyone else … it really is like having an extra man!” The party would, he predicted, “last for a couple” of days. “It’s gonna be some celebration, so … get to Westport!”

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