BY RYAN FERRY<\/p>\n
ADOPTED Donegal man Jim Boyle has been on a high all week after a big result in Denmark.<\/p>\n
Boyle, who moved to Ballybofey from Scotland with his wife Angela last year, is part of the management team for the Ireland Walking Football team.<\/p>\n
They stepped away from that brand of football last week to take part in the FIFA Super Masters World Cup and Ireland claimed the silverware in brilliant style.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a great week with the sun out and I\u2019m basking in the glory of having assisted Ireland in winning a World Championship,\u201d Boyle told the Donegal News.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what the level it is at \u2013 it\u2019s still sweet.<\/p>\n
\u201c It\u2019s a tournament that is run annually by FIFA the world governing body.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s for older players like myself and they hold an over 60s tournament and an over 65s tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was assistant coach for the 60s and there were 13 countries participating and this year it was in Copenhagen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played in the over 65s competition two years ago when it was held in Manchester and there was a penalty kick competition and I won that for Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe headed to Copenhagen with the aim of doing a little bit better than last year in Zurich where we came fifth.<\/p>\n
\u201cLo and behold, we\u2019ve gone and won it this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI shouldn\u2019t play it down because it\u2019s the highest event for men of our age that you can play football in.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a five-a-side competition and it\u2019s running football which has slightly different rules than you would get in a normal game with no heading for example.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re up against the best of the best from other countries. We played six games the first day and six games the second day and the top two teams played in the final.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe topped the league and played Northern Ireland again and beat them on penalties.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo win it was amazing. To have beaten Northern Ireland in the final was great and the two best teams in the world at that level come from this island.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boyle has helped with some goalkeeping coaching with Castlefin Celtic and has played some Walking Football in Clonmany but it\u2019s still in its infancy here in Donegal.<\/p>\n
He is a big advocate for Walking Football and explained how he got the opportunity to represent Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI played football all my life over in Scotland where I lived.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a strong Irish heritage and it was always my intention to come and live here when I retired. I have always felt like that would be coming home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was playing five-a-side with my friends when I got a bit older and I was then asked by one of my friends who was kind of involved with the walking football for Ireland what my Irish heritage was.<\/p>\n
\u201cI explained that my great grandparents were from Donegal and Leitrim and I was subsequently asked to play in a trial down in England and I was selected to play in a tournament in France as a goalkeeper.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went on to play fifty odd times for Ireland with caps to prove it.<\/p>\n
\u201cInjuries started to take a toll and arthritis gave me a lot of issues and bother and when I stopped playing they asked me to help the management.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you can appreciate walking football is huge in England where it started.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has cascaded around the world and I have played in Spain, France, Germany, Morocco and numerous more places and it\u2019s only going to get bigger.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe difficulty we have in Donegal is the GAA is huge. But as you get older you can\u2019t play walking GAA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe game doesn\u2019t translate to that format but football does.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty much like speed walking but it\u2019s all about making the ball do the work.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou take control of it and play to feet. You can\u2019t kick into space because you can\u2019t run onto it. You can block but not tackle.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mental health benefits for men and women are huge and when you\u2019re in the dynamic of a group, people can see if someone isn\u2019t themselves so I can\u2019t recommend it highly enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe go for a coffee or a drink afterwards which is good for people as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo get it going properly in Donegal, we need to up the profile.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to get the message out there that you can participate in active sport in your latter years as I am doing and thoroughly enjoying it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to get the FAI to connect with us and get official accreditation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not looking for anything other than their approval for what we are doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou hear about the FAI being into grassroots football, well they need to walk the walk and talk the talk.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll they would need to say is walking football for older people is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ireland Walking Football team have to pay their own way to tournaments but that is not an issue for a committed group of footballers.<\/p>\n
They have another big tournament coming up in June.<\/p>\n
Boyle would encourage anyone who thinks they would enjoy Walking Football or who could contribute to the national team to come forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re back to Walking Football next week and we have a Four Nations tournament with ourselves, England, Northern Ireland and Wales.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be taking the team because John O\u2019Dwyer is on holiday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe great thing is because it\u2019s in Dublin, we have quite a number of players coming up from different areas in Ireland with a view to trialling for the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be a full international but these guys are getting a chance to represent Ireland at a tournament.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI would put an invite out there to anybody who might be interested to get in touch with me.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe could do a one-day event in Donegal if there were enough people interested and show them what walking football is like because it\u2019s a great avenue for keeping fit and meeting other people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BY RYAN FERRY ADOPTED Donegal man Jim Boyle has been on a high all week after a big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-475857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}