Boyne’s Vallejo Buzzing For Play-Off Clash With Kilfeacle

There are some clubs that live in people long before they ever pull on the jersey. They sit in the background of a town, in conversations around a community, in sideline chats on Sunday mornings, in stories told by older players about where the club has been and where it still hopes to go.

For Robbie Vallejo, Boyne RFC became that kind of place. Not the club he grew up in, not a club he knew all too well, but the club that gave him back his love of rugby and, in many ways, gave him a second sporting home.

This Saturday in Mullingar, Boyne stand on the edge of something they have been inching towards for years. Relegated from the All-Ireland League at the end of the 2016-17 season, they slipped into the difficult in-between space that can swallow clubs whole, too proud to accept decline, too far from the summit to feel its warmth.

There were years when the AIL felt distant, when All-Ireland Junior Cup runs were not materialising, when promotion talk seemed more like nostalgia than ambition. Now, after back to back Leinster League titles, Boyne are back in the conversation. One more push and the wilderness might finally be behind them.

In the first of Saturday’s double-header of Energia All-Ireland League Provincial Promotion Play-Off Semi Finals in Mullingar, Kevin McCleery’s side take on Munster League champions Kilfeacle & District, a fixture that carries all the weight of years spent building towards this moment.

The last time the teams met was in the first round of the All-Ireland Junior Cup back in 2009, when Boyne won 59-12. It is a scoreline far too old to mean much now, more historical footnote than useful guide. This is a very different Boyne side, built not on memory but on recent momentum, resilience and a squad that has slowly and steadily grown into itself.

At the heart of that journey is Vallejo, the dynamic back originally from New Ross whose surname still catches people off guard, whose rugby life once drifted into frustration, and who now finds himself preparing for one of the biggest days in the club’s recent history. He is from Wexford by upbringing, Spanish on his dad’s side, and Boyne by conviction. That last identity, more than any other, is the one that now seems to matter most.

“We’ve kind of been bouncing around a bit, kind of a yo-yo team since I joined,” Vallejo admits on the last number of seasons for Boyne.

“That was all of eight years ago now, got a job up in Drogheda. Have been kind of bouncing around between Leinster 1B and 1A, won 1B twice. And then last year, we kind of had a decent squad picked up. Dylan Lynch, who actually taught me in school. He was kind of floating around Dublin and he came in on board coaching-wise.

He’s brought a lot. And then this year, we’ve managed to pick up Niall Banks. He’s an American who’s living in Togher, so nearby Drogheda. He’s kind of come out of nowhere and been very good. Leon Fox as well, who’s a Garda in Drogheda. Collie Joyce-Ahearne and Bevan Duffy, these are all lads from the area, but haven’t played rugby for various reasons.

And they kind of came into a squad that was on a bit of a high from 1B. And Kevin McCleery, our coach, said at the start of the year, we’re going to go back to back, and he believed us. Now, whether we did as a team, I’m not sure.

We kind of just took it one game at a time. Suddenly, we kind of had won five or six in a row, and we lost to Suttonians half-way through the season by a point. Our tails were up, and we kind of just kept going. It’s kind of cliche and boring, but if we win this game, we’re in another spot. We win this game, and we just kind of kept winning.

When we did drop points, we were lucky enough. Teams around us also dropped points. We just have a system there with Kevin that seems to suit the players we have. Other teams haven’t figured us out this year I suppose. We’ve been lucky enough that way.”

It is a modest way of describing what has actually been a significant rise. Boyne did not stumble into this position. They built it. The foundations were laid last season when they lifted the 1B title with confidence and cohesion.

This year, the challenge was different. Leinster 1A has a different edge to it, a hard-bitten competitiveness where established clubs know how to drag teams into ugly afternoons and force them to win by patience rather than flair. Boyne met that challenge with a consistency that may have surprised outsiders but not those inside the dressing room.

“Even the losses that we picked up the league, they were two one point losses and a two point loss. I think that was something that Kevin said at the start of the year, we’re not going to win 14 out of 14, but the games we do lose, it’s important that we pick up as many points as possible. I think we ended up picking up five points from those three losses, which is the same as a bonus point win.

Even when we were losing, we were still tipping away at the scoreboard. But yeah, there is a good team there. And I know we were 1B last year, but we had five lads on Leinster Juniors, even when we were in 1B.

The captain of Leinster Juniors last year was Eoghan Duffy. He’s our full-back. But there’s plenty of experience there, and lads who’ve played at decent levels. I know we were coming up from 1B, but I think we knew as a team that there was a bit of a foundation, or there was a base of players there who were well capable of giving 1A a go.”

That word, foundation, feels important. It speaks to the deeper story of Boyne over the past number of years. Clubs do not come back from difficult periods purely by accident. They come back because enough people decide that standards matter again. Vallejo saw the lower point of that process when he first arrived in Drogheda in 2018, a young teacher fresh from college, simply looking for a local rugby club and finding one that was still searching for itself.

“I think it was two years before I got there that they had come down from the AIL, so it was their second year of junior rugby when I joined. I don’t think the lads would mind me saying the club was a bit of a mess at the time.

I remember turning up to training, and there’d be seven, eight, nine maybe even ten lads at training, and you’re playing Leinster League 1A. That’s never going to cut the mustard anywhere. Slowly but surely, we had Vic Ball that we won 1B with.

He came in in my second year there in 2019. In fairness to himself and Kevin, they did really place a big emphasis on the culture of the club. Being a local club, that’s something we pride ourselves on.

Bar myself and maybe one or two others who are working in the area, the whole club is from the town. It was something to be really proud of representing your area. Slowly but surely, the numbers started to rise at training.

This year, we’ve managed to field three teams more often than not. Most of the time we can’t field three teams because a team playing against us is a forfeit. We have 45, 50 lads at every training session, which would have been unheard of when I got here.

It’s something now that the town is really proud of the club. When I first got there and we came down from Leinster League, that was a low point in the club’s history. Slowly but surely, and even off-field, we have a new astro this year.

The club managed to get grants and funding for that. Things like that have made a huge difference. There’s a new club gym as well that we’ve built since I’ve been there. Things that have slowly progressed and made the club a little bit more professional than when I was first there.”

That is the real story of Boyne, not just the wins, but the restoration of belief. Training nights that once looked sparse now feel crowded. Infrastructure that once lagged has started to catch up with ambition. Local players have come back in. Coaches have brought clarity. The town has begun to reconnect with the team.

Vallejo’s own route there was not especially planned. It was practical, almost casual at first. He is from New Ross, went to school in Good Counsel College, played underage rugby with New Ross and spent a few years in Dublin playing with Trinity and Lansdowne. Then work brought him north.

“I am originally from New Ross in Wexford. I would have gone to school and gone to Good Counsel College, and played underage rugby at New Ross and then played a little bit in Dublin for three or four years. I came out of college as a teacher and was lucky enough to get a job in Drogheda and then literally just Googled what’s the rugby club in Drogheda because I’d never heard of Drogheda Rugby Club but it was Boyne. Myself and colleagues I saw rocked up one day and said do you mind if we play? And have been here since. There’s been a few rocky days in between, let me tell you.”

That mix of luck and timing changed everything. Rugby had, for a time, become more burden than joy. Like many players who spend their youth deeply immersed in the sport, Vallejo had reached the point where it felt overfamiliar, perhaps even draining. Boyne altered that.

“It’s been an interesting journey to say the least and there was a stage there where I was absolutely just sick of rugby. It was all I kind of did underage and I think what Boyne really did was it kind of made me fall back in love with the dressing room.

The craic people who have similar interests to you and people that you see in your day to day life, whether you might see them in the town or you might spot someone in a coffee shop and they’re like oh well how are Boyne getting on and they know you play for them so it was kind of a great way for me to get to know people in the area and get to know a bit more about the town.

It’s somewhere now where my best friends are on the rugby team even on days like today. I do look forward to going training even if the weather isn’t playing ball but yeah they’ve kind of made me fall back in love with it.”

There is something deeply revealing in that. Clubs at this level are not just places where people compete. They are social anchors. They make towns feel smaller and warmer. They create shorthand between people who might otherwise have passed one another without notice. Boyne became that for Vallejo. It gave him not just rugby, but community.

His own background adds another thread to the story. The name Vallejo tends to stop people for a second. It does not sound like New Ross, and that is because it is not. But soon it become part of Wexford.

“Dad is Spanish. He was born in Madrid but lived in Barcelona all his life. I was born there as well and then mam is from New Ross and they met over in Barcelona and when I was nine or ten months old she convinced him that New Ross is a much nicer prospect than in Barcelona. Maybe in another life I would have been playing soccer at some sort of a level but yeah moved over to New Ross and stuck with an odd name that no one seems to know how to pronounce.”

It is the kind of detail that might seem incidental, but it fits him somehow, a player who does not quite fit the standard template, who found his place not where he started, but where the sport brought him next.

And now rugby has brought him to this weekend, to a game that could edge Boyne closer to an Energia All-Ireland League return few would have predicted a few years ago.

The opposition, Kilfeacle & District, will arrive as Munster League champions, seasoned and dangerous with a history of taking on teams across the country. Vallejo speaks about them with the respect that this stage demands.

“I think it’s probably a little bit of a mix going into this weekend. We do video analysis every week and Kev is great for getting clips of other teams and clips of the teams we’re playing so we’ve training this evening and there’s a video session so I’m sure he’s managed to get some of the details.

But look anyone you play at this level at this juncture in the season they’re going to be a great team. When we played Leinster Juniors last year there was two or three lads on the Munster team from Kilfeacle & District, their number 8 Kevin Kinnane, he’s a super player so he’ll be someone we’ll have to keep an eye on and maybe have something in place for him because he caused Leinster Juniors problems so if he’s causing problems at that level we’ll have to keep an eye on him.”

This is not the language of a side getting carried away. It is measured, specific, and grounded in preparation. That has been one of Boyne’s great strengths this season. The ambition is real, but it has not been allowed to run wild.

There is appreciation for what has already been achieved, but no desire to turn this into a sentimental ending. Boyne have not come this far to be satisfied with the story alone. They want the next chapter. They want the AIL back.

For Vallejo, that would mean more than another medal or another promotion. It would be validation for the years in between, the sparse training sessions, the rebuilding, the nights when the club felt fragile, the slow reawakening of pride in Drogheda. He has seen Boyne as a club in uncertainty and Boyne as a club in ascent. He has been part of the wobble and the surge.

On Saturday in Mullingar, he will line out again for the adopted club that gave him back his rugby. The man from New Ross with the Spanish surname, the Leinster Junior caps, the Gaelic football background and the gift for making things happen with ball in hand, now carries a little part of Boyne’s wider ambition with him. The town will come down in buses and cars. The support will be there. The opportunity will be real.

And for a club that has almost come all the way back from the wilderness, that might be the most important thing of all.

“Promotion to the AIL, it’s not something that we even talked about or thought about, or even crossed our minds that right lads we’re winning Leinster to try and get into the AIL, it was just we win this competition and whatever happens, happens.

It’s only really in the last week we have kind of turned our minds to this, and look it would obviously be a great thing to get up to to the AIL again. It’s something that I think every junior club aspires to.

Whether it be in the near future or they’re building foundations to try and get there, I know there’s a supporters bus and I’ve been talking to a few people around the town and they’re all going to travel down so hopefully get a good crowd there and look we’ll see what we can do.

You always want to keep progressing. That’s something that Kevin has been saying to us whether that be going from 1B to 1A to the AIL, it’s something that you just have to always aspire to be better.

We’re going to give it our full attention and, look, Kilfeacle & District won’t roll over, and I’m sure it’ll be a great game and if we can just give a good account of ourselves if that’s good enough on the day great and if it’s not look it’s been a great season, but hopefully that’s not something that we’re going to talk about on the day.”

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