Josie Boyle

Josie Boyle died on Monday, October 12, 2026. His death notice gave his address as 13 St Benildus Avenue, Ballyshannon. His age and the cause of death were not made public.

The next morning Aodh Ruadh paid tribute to him through club PRO John Hughes, describing him as "Ballyshannon's own renaissance man" and extending sympathy to his wife Marian, son Mark, daughter Jean, the wider family and their many friends. Funeral arrangements had not been published at the time of writing.

Josie Boyle came from Ballyshannon in the south of County Donegal and spent his life there, latterly living on St Benildus Avenue in the town. He came through the Aodh Ruadh club, which, together with neighbouring Bundoran, made up the St Joseph's senior football team that dominated Donegal in the late 1960s and 1970s. His date of birth has not been published.

Boyle was a member of the St Joseph's team that won seven Donegal senior football championships between 1965 and 1976, and the Ulster Club Championship in 1975, still a rare achievement for a Donegal club. A highly versatile and athletic footballer, he played most positions from corner back to corner forward, and was usually asked to mark the opposition's most dangerous attacker or playmaker.

He also played for Donegal and was on the panel that won the county's first Ulster Senior Football Championship in 1972.

In hurling he won two county titles with Aodh Ruadh. In 1975 he captained the side that beat Burt in the final, and in 1977 he played in goal, saving a penalty in the final as Aodh Ruadh regained the title.

As a coach and mentor in the 1980s and 1990s he shaped hundreds of young Ballyshannon players. He was central to the minor county titles of 1990 and 1992 and to the club's only top level Ulster title on the field, won against Clan na Gael in Belfast on New Year's Day 1993. He helped the under 21 teams to titles in 1988, 1989 and 1993, and influenced the senior county championship sides of 1994, 1997 and 1998, working closely with Sylvester Maguire on the last two. In 1995 he was on the back room team that helped the club's ladies win their first senior title and the seven-a-side All-Ireland Shield.

"What I really enjoyed was the coaching. There was enjoyment out of getting results, but when Monday came around, it was back to basics again," he once said.

Boyle was married to Marian, and they had a son, Mark, and a daughter, Jean. Fitness was a lifelong interest: he helped lead the club's sponsored cycles in the 1990s, kept up long bike rides into later life, and played his last game for Aodh Ruadh, a challenge match, at the age of 60. In later years he was a regular spectator at the club's grounds, watching hurling and football at every level from under 12 to senior. The club remembered him as open, humble, unassuming and gentle, with no time for airs and graces, always ready with a joke or a sharp insight.

Boyle was inducted into the Aodh Ruadh Hall of Fame in 2006, an honour the club reserves for those who brought it particular distinction and does not award every year. He is listed among the club's notable players as a 1972 Ulster Senior Football Championship winner with Donegal. His club credited him above all with the coaching philosophy behind its successes of the late 1980s and 1990s, and described him as an ongoing inspiration for the generations that followed.