Johnny Doyle delivers once again

One of the stories of the weekend was Johnny Doyle’s heroics for Allenwood in their Kildare SFC relegation final against Confey.

Proving that age is just a number, the 47-year-old came off the bench at half-time to score 1-2 in the last quarter as Allenwood prevailed by 1-16 to 0-13 to preserve their top-flight status. The victory ended a run of 15 successive defeats for Allenwood who may well have been relegated had Doyle not come out of retirement ahead of their Kildare SFC campaign.

His comeback was cut short by a shoulder injury sustained against Clogherinkoe in the preliminary round but, as the old saying goes, it’s hard to keep a good man down and the Kildare legend returned in the nick of time to save his beloved club’s bacon, 29 years after making his championship debut for them.

“There's a lot of emotion to be honest with you. We had a tough few weeks, we had a tough year,” the 2010 All-Star told Clubber TV.

“We played a lot of good football this year but just couldn't fall the right side of the line. That adds a bit of pressure. But in fairness to the group, they never quit all year. We would have had 25 or 30 lads in the field every evening we went to training.

“We knew there was a performance in us and we knew coming into this it was going to be a really tough battle.

“We're very relieved. You can talk about winning finals or talk about doing well in the championship, but there is real pressure here to stay senior. The nucleus of this team is a very young team and this is where you want to ply your trade in senior football.”

Is there anything Johnny Doyle can't do 😱

Johnny Doyle scores a goal for @allenwood_gfc to put them one step closer to keeping their senior football status

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— Clubber (@clubber) September 21, 2025