The Kieran Shannon Interview: All-Star Sinead is setting the Goldrick standard
She’s the ladies equivalent of Seamus Moynihan — the go-to defender when there’s a fire to put out, whether it’s with All-Ireland champions Dublin or All-Ireland-chasing Foxrock-Cabinteely in today’s Club SFC decider against Cork’s Mourneabbey. She’s smiling now, but it hasn’t always been golden moments for All-Star defender Sinead Goldrick, writes .
He always sees her smiling.
Ask Ken Robinson as Dublin trainer what Sinead Goldrick brings to a set up and he’ll talk of her workrate, grit, skill and humility, yet as much as he pictures her breaking up field, another score averted and another about to be created, the most overriding image he has of her is her smiling.
“Her smile is infectious. When I think of a Monday night gym session in January, I can see Sinead Goldrick coming in there and she’s beaming and subliminally it helps lift everyone, no matter what their day has been like. And then she’ll give everything she has to that session — in fact at times you have to rein her in because she’d go through the wall for the team. But the young players are seeing all this. ‘That’s Sinead Goldrick, that’s my aspiration, I’ll follow that example.’ Everything about her is 100%.”
Yet this time two years ago Goldrick wasn’t smiling. The girl renowned for giving it her all felt she had no more to give. The girl who it seemed could run all day was running on empty. No sooner had Robinson and Mick Bohan landed the Dublin job then they were informed they mightn’t get to work with her at all.
Her club Foxrock-Cabinteely had just been convincingly beaten in the All Ireland final by Donaghmoyne from Monaghan, having gone the opening 28 minutes without a score. Two months earlier she had lost another All Ireland final, with Dublin, the third consecutive year Cork had pipped them by a single kick of a ball. For someone who had been in the stand when Dublin had reached the summit in 2010, four All Ireland defeats in the space of 26 months had taken its toll.
“After we lost with the club, I didn’t want to go back to Dublin,” she recalls. “Mick [Bohan] and I had to have a conversation. I was just so upset. Because when you and your team have given everything you can and feel you can’t give it more, you lose a confidence and, I suppose, motivation.
“There were times I was at work and someone would bring up one of the finals and I’d have to go the bathroom to cry. And that was no-one’s fault. They meant well by saying, ‘Hard luck in the game’ and I’d just say, ‘Thanks.’ But I don’t think people outside maybe your family don’t realise how much hard work goes behind it, that it’s not just a case of ‘Hard luck.’
“After we’d lost with the county for the third year in a row, I had either a county semi-final or final with the club the following weekend and I found that very hard; those three weeks after that [2016] final loss to Cork was a really tough time. Because I had just lost again something I had wanted my whole life. You’re there back training with the club and you really want it but at the back of your head, you’re tired and upset about losing. It took me I’d say about a month to get my head around that.
“And then when we lost again with the club…”
Bohan could see she was in pain, in more ways than one. For the previous couple of years she’d been struggling with tendonitis in her hamstrings. The hamstrings needed some rest and rehab. Her head and heart needed some rest and recovery. You can’t do everything and look after everyone, Sinead. You’ve got to look after yourself.
Bohan gave her the league off. Dublin didn’t win it, Cork did, again, and by the year’s end Goldrick wouldn’t end up winning an All-Star either, the first time since 2011 that honour had eluded her. But she’d won her first All Ireland. The rest had served her well.
After today’s All-Ireland club final, she’ll be taking a similar course of treatment. Six or eight weeks off to rest the hamstrings some more, just tipping over with some rehab and work in the gym. She’s found a formula and balance that works for her.
At the moment she’s probably the best footballer in the country, certainly its best defender, according to her former Dublin manager Greg McGonigle. In his three years over Dublin, he ultilised Goldrick somewhat like Páidí used Seamus Moynihan — sometimes in the natural habitat of half-back, sometimes in midfield, or when the situation demanded it, back putting out fires inside.
“No job is too big to her,” he says.
She’ll mark the best — Ciara O’Sullivan, Cora Staunton — and she’ll thrive on it. She’ll do whatever the team needs. She’s all about the team. Last week, say, at the All-Stars; it was her sixth time winning one but she was probably thinking more that Olwen Carey or Niamh Collins should have got one. Goldie is gold.
She’s the best defender I’ve ever coached. The best defenders sense danger. They just know where to be. And that’s not just an anticipation thing; that’s a mentality. I’ve seen Goldie make 40-metre sprints back to get a hand in when she had no right to win that ball. Some other players might see that threat mounting but not have made the effort. She will because she’s a warrior.
Robinson concurs. He’s fond of saying there’s no such thing as leadership, only acts of leadership, and on and off the field he’s seen Goldrick produce countless acts of such leadership.
He’ll point to last month’s All Ireland club semi-final as a prime example; you can see it on social media yourself if you look it up. Once more Foxrock-Cabinteely are up against their 2016 tormentors, Donaghmoyne. With a minute to go the sides are level when Goldrick gets onto the ball inside her own half. She bursts forward, putting the ball to her right foot three times to take her up to the opposing 20-metre line where she then lays the ball off with her left hand to a teammate. She then goes for the return, gets it back, fists it off again, and then, one more cross-goal pass later, Róisín McGovern has the ball in the back of the net.
That passage of play exemplified so much of what makes Goldrick such an exceptional footballer and sportsperson.
First of all there was her speed off the mark and sustained pace which left Donaghmoyne defenders in her wake. Goldrick was a 400m hurdles Leinster champion.Then there was her capacity to pass off either hand. When she was a student in Coláiste Íosagáin on the Stillorgan Road, Goldrick, like everyone else, could play only one sport for the school for fear your academics could suffer for all the half-days you could be taking. Even though the school offered Gaelic football, a sport Goldrick was already representing Dublin in at U14, U16 and minor level, her choice was basketball. The school was a powerhouse in the sport, winning multiple All Irelands under the tutelage of Maire O’Toole and Ed Randolph, and with Goldrick — or Small Sinead as she was known before her sixth-year growth spurt — at point guard. She’s now renowned for her capacity to strip the ball off opposing footballers, a skill she credits to her time and training on the hardwood.
Throw in the couple of years she did of gymnastics, which could explain her ability to evade those hapless Donaghmoyne defenders and you have the poster girl for why kids should play multiple sports and how they can acquire transferable skills.
“My parents were great for allowing us to try every sport under the sun. My sister Tara swam underage for Ireland. Dad would have played a bit of rugby and Gaelic. Mum wouldn’t have got to play any sport. Her father would have been a bit traditional; she would only have worn pants after he passed away. But maybe because of that she let us be free to play whatever sport we wanted.”
It was in college that she began to specialise more on the football. She cut back on the athletics because she found its training didn’t engender the kind of teamwork that a convivial spirit like her found with the ball sports. Basketball took a back seat too whenever there was a clash of training or fixtures because her scholarship to UCD had been in football. Then she was drafted into the Dublin senior setup, along with her peers and friends Niamh McEvoy and Noelle Healy.
She was a couple of years on the team when at the start of the 2010 championship she decided to go away to Thailand for a few months with some college friends. She had a whale of a time but an even greater regret.
“I remember sitting in the stand watching the girls lifting the All Ireland. And while I was delighted for them, after that I never wanted to go travelling [in-season] again because I wanted that All Ireland.”
And so began her quest, Lee Keegan-eque in its magnificence and frustration. From 2011 to 2013, she won two All-Stars but no All-Ireland semi-final. Then under McGonigle, she was appointed captain at just 23. Over the next three years Dublin would win three straight semi-finals and Goldrick three All-Stars, but crucially and cruelly no Brendan Martin.
The first probably cut the deepest. Midway through the second half of the final Dublin had been 10 points up.
I remember just feeling stuck in the mud for those last 15 minutes when Cork kept coming at us in waves. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling, of not being able to move, of not being present. I remember being aware of the clock, being aware of the score; I wasn’t focusing on the game itself. But what I’d learn from that is that whenever someone is getting on top of you like that, just get on the ball and do something simple. Because if I do that, I get myself back into the game and my natural instincts kick back in.
In 2015 they didn’t show what they were capable of; although they lost by just two points in a goalless game, neither they or Cork or the game ever took off. In 2016 they took the game to Cork but it didn’t transfer sufficiently onto the scoreboard and when Cork struck for a goal shortly after half-time Dublin didn’t feel they had enough in their reservoir. That’s what made the past two years so sweet. In the last quarter, Dublin felt they could had more to draw upon.
“What Greg did for us is amazing and I would hope he gets the recognition for the all the work and the foundation he put in. I think what Mick brought was an expectation. He had trained men’s teams and expected that we should be getting food after training, he expected that we should have full access to S&C facilities and expertise.
“With Ken he often says there’s going to be some time in a game – it could be the last 20 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes — where we will outrun every team, where we will just take off the shackles and our fitness will allow us to really show the football we have.”
She’s seen the standards go up right across the board, in Dublin and around the country. She points to six minors on the current Foxrock-Cabinteely team – all of them can kick off either foot. That would not have been expected of a ladies footballer a few years ago. It’s not by accident to her that the 2018 Cork-Dublin final was a superior advertisement for the sport than the 2015 clash between the sides. Players are getting fitter, more skillful. And thankfully, higher profile too.
The latter trend is of particular interest to her. As well as being one of the faces of Lidl’s ground-breaking advertising campaign, Goldrick’s day job is as a PR account executive and one of her main projects these days is the 20x20 campaign for the Federation of Irish Sport. So what are her own views on how ladies football can meet those targets?
“I think the coverage and participation has really increased but it’s the attendance at games [that needs addressing] outside the All Ireland final itself. And I know everyone says it but a really easy win is double-headers ahead of more men’s games, especially in the league, when stadiums aren’t full. Definitely in Dublin, we’ve seen a huge increase in interest and recognition not just from our success and that of the men’s but from playing games before them in the league.”
Now, this evening, to further promote the game, the All Ireland club final will be played under lights and on live national TV. It’s the ultimate hunger game, a lot like last year’s Galway-Waterford hurling decider.
For the past four seasons, either Foxrock-Cabinteely (once) or Donoughmore (three times) have lost the final with neither club having yet got their hands on the Dolores Tyrrell Cup. Tonight, after all those provincial wins and All Ireland heartbreak, one of them will experience redemption; the other, more anguish.
“I’m just so excited about it because of the journey we’ve been on. Two years ago I think we were just happy to have been there because beating Carnacon in the semi-final was just such a huge thing for us but then after the way we played in the final was so dispiriting. We didn’t do ourselves justice.
“People are saying now ‘You’re playing Cork, you beat them in the All Ireland final (with Dublin), but they’re two separate things. My memory of Mourneabbey is losing to them last year in extra-time of a replay in a semi-final.”
She’s well aware of the determination the Cork crowd will be bringing and also the class too. Goldrick voted for Ciara O’Sullivan as her player of the year, having not been able to vote for a team-mate, whereas Doireann O’Sullivan she classifies as probably the best long-range point-taker in football.
Game recognises game.
