Callum’s targeting more success with Clogher Valley

He may only be 21 years of age but Clogher Valley RFC number eight, and occasional centre, Callum Smyton, has enjoyed a glorious run of success over the last three years.

Since stepping into the first XV at the Cran, he has won two All-Ireland Junior Cups, the Ulster Junior Cup, Ulster Championship 1, the All-Ireland League round-robin promotion tournament and just last season he was a key part of Clogher’s Ulster Senior Shield and Energia All-Ireland League 2C winning side, which earned promotion at the first attempt in the process.

Then, to cap all that off he was named the Energia All-Ireland League 2C player of the season, pipping his friend and team-mate, Ewan Haire and Galwegians’ Ryan Smith to the honour.

And while he admits that individual honour was a nice accolade to receive, the team ethos that has driven Clogher to so much success in recent seasons is evident in Smyton’s attitude to such an award.

“It was nice to get it but it was a bit surprising. When the nominations came out I’d have been disappointed if neither me or Ewan had got it considering we won the league so I can’t complain. You have to be happy about stuff like that,” he said.

“It was a bit awkward [being up against a team-mate] but he’s a friend too so if he’d have won it I’d have been happy for him too as he was for me – the two of us were happy that one of us won it!”

The close nature of the Clogher first XV squad is perhaps not surprising considering so much of it is made up of a batch of friends, who all came through the ranks at the same time, developing and being nurtured by head coach, Stephen Bothwell. Callum admits had it not been for him he may well have left after an impressive first season in adult rugby.

At just 18 years of age, Smyton burst onto the Ulster Championship 1 scene, driving Clogher close to promotion, only for an all-conquering Instonians side, who went almost three full league seasons undefeated, to pip them at the post. On the back of several starring performances, he was invited to play an end of season clash with Belfast side, Malone, who, ironically, he will now play against twice in Energia All-Ireland League 2B next season following their relegation and the Valley’s promotion.

And while he admits it was a tough decision to make at the time, the key component was Bothwell, who has been an almost ever-present in his rugby career over the last 14 years.

“When I first joined Clogher Valley [first XV in 2021/22] they were in Q1 [Ulster Championship 1] and at the end of the season I played for Malone and now, next year, I’m going to be playing against Malone in 2B,” he explained,.

“At that stage I was very close to leaving and if Stevie (Bothwell) hadn’t been there I would have but it’s because I knew so much about him and he knew so much about me and all my friends were coming through – there were eight of us came through in the same year – and I had a feeling we wouldn’t be far away [from success and achieving senior status].

“Stevie has coached me since P3, every year since I was seven, apart from three years when I was in Enniskillen Royal [Grammar School] firsts because then you go to Ashley Finlay and Stewart McCain, but the other eleven years he has coached me.

“His son, Matthew [first XV scrumhalf] is the same age as me, so Stevie coached our Minis from P3 to P7 and when we went to Enniskillen Royal he then became coach of our school team up to Medallions, along with Alastair Keys at the time, and when he was Clogher Valley coach we just had to come back.”

The fact that Clogher is an entirely home-grown team with youth on its side, Smyton believes, is a vital part of their progress and run of success in recent years.

“To do it that way and to achieve success with a home-grown side makes it even more special,” he beamed. “And in games, because we are home-grown, we’re all best friends, we play for each other. There’s a lot of heart in the performances and every team that plays us hates playing us because we never really lie down.

“Most other teams, after maybe 60 minutes there is an easing off but there’s no give up in us, which is part of the reason why we have been so successful.

“It also helps that we’re still a young team, so we’re probably fitter than most teams as well, which helps in the last 20 minutes when the opposition starts to tire. And most of the other teams are bigger than us, which is a big thing. We’re smaller and fitter so it takes around 60 minutes to tire them out and then we can start playing a bit more.”

That facet of their game, the tirelessness, will be tested to its limit next season when they come up against even bigger sides than they have done over the last three seasons, which is going to require plenty of hard work during pre-season.

“Every team [in 2B and above] is massive compared to us and we saw in that [Ulster Senior Shield] final against Ballymena at the end of the year – they are two leagues above us – if we had a game the week after that match we’d probably have been down five boys because of the physical toll it took, the injuries and niggles sustained,” he observed.

“One boy had six staples in his head, [Aaron] Dunwoody fractured his wrist and he’s going to be out for six months probably, and another boy hurt the AC joint, so we’d have been down a few boys, which is why we need to grow the squad for next year.

“And in pre-season there will be a big focus on gym too, to get boys stronger and bigger so we can maybe deal with those bigger men a bit better!”

And Smyton knows squad depth will be key, which is why he is delighted to see another generation of talented young players coming through the ranks.

“We’re a home-grown side, we don’t really bring people in from the outside because it’s difficult due to our location so we have to focus more on home-grown players. It’s working at the minute and hopefully it keeps on working,” he said.

“We have 18 young boys coming through this year – from either schools or under-18 sides – which will help all the squads – first, seconds and thirds.”

Having adapted to their first season in the senior ranks impressively, sealing a league and Ulster Shield double in the process, means Clogher will begin their 2B campaign with confidence and with no shortage of experience, having learned plenty from their debut campaign last season.

Going into the 2023/24 term as Ulster junior league and All-Ireland Junior Cup champions, the were quietly confident of success but they found out the importance of consistent performances at All-Ireland League level.

“Secretly, yes, we believed we could achieve success immediately after making the step up but you never really know either,” observed Smyton who acknowledged that his side might have briefly taken their eye off the ball after winning their first seven league games of the season to engineer a healthy lead at the top of the 2C table.

He continued: “We always said top four [was a realistic goal] but after the first six games, when we won six from six all with a bonus point, we sort of said, ‘we’re not going for top four, we’re going to win it here’.

“And then after that, we went into the seventh game and that was away to Galwegians [who were second at the time] and we won that game, which was massive, but then we lost two back-to-back [at Enniscorthy and home against Omagh Accies], which was actually a good thing because it let us not get too far ahead of ourselves.

“To be honest, when we beat Galwegians, we had a bit of a party down in Galway, we did a two-nighter. There was around 150 people down watching us that day and I’d say about 100 of them stayed down and we suffered the consequences of that against Enniscorthy.

“And then, against Omagh, I don’t even know what happened that day. Things just didn’t work for us, lineouts didn’t work, scrums didn’t really work and when you’re not getting set piece ball it’s hard to win rugby games. But to be fair to Omagh, they were very good that day, that’s the best performance they’ve had in about three years and it showed that if you don’t perform on the day in All-Ireland rugby you don’t win games.”

Following those defeats Clogher entered a much needed Christmas break, after which they won three vital games back-to-back before losing to Midleton, which sent the title race down to the final day, reinforcing the importance of being on the ball game in and game out, which Smyton believes they will have to be next term in order to achieve more success.

“I think the Christmas break came at a good time for us because boys were starting to get niggles and were needing a bit of a break and we refocussed again because we knew we had Omagh and Enniscorthy back-to-back after those losses,” he added. “That’s all we were thinking about, gaining vengeance against them and we knew we then had Galwegians at home after that so we knew that if we won those three games, barring we messed up ourselves, the league was in our hands.

“That’s what we wanted to do, to make sure it was in our hands, so we only had ourselves to blame if we didn’t perform.

“And again, against Midleton we just didn’t perform and it again showed the importance of performance in All-Ireland rugby and that’s going to be massive next year because when you’re playing even better teams, especially with us being so much smaller than everyone else, we have to play ball to win games.

“We can’t just try to bully a team when we’re not on our mettle, we need everything to get results and we’re quite lucky that most weeks it does happen but the odd week it doesn’t and that’s when things maybe don’t go our way.

“But the plan is to keep pushing and to try to get top four, definitely, and we’ll see what happens!”

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