“You’d be envious of the girls coming through now.” This statement, or a version of it, has been recently said to me by at least three inter-county giants of women’s GAA. I’m sure it’s a sentiment that is deeply felt by many female players in the latter stages of their careers. Besides the envy, there’s a wistful joy in it, too. Things are getting better before our very eyes.
In his bestselling non-fiction book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, the writer Malcolm Gladwell explored major sociological changes, in particular, ‘the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point’. Examining the widespread adoption of different products, ideas and behaviours, the book demonstrates how societal change can seem to happen both very gradually and all at once.
That’s how 2021 felt for anyone invested in women’s sport. Over the past few years, there’s been observable progress in the popularity and coverage, but it has also felt frustratingly gradual at times. As a sportswriter — especially one interested in promoting women in sport — you are always hoping for good news stories and charismatic personalities that capture the imagination. This year, there was one at every turn, more than we could keep up with — so many success stories to hitch our wagons to. It can be hard to identify change in real time, but in 2021, you could almost feel the tectonic plates of progress moving under your feet.
Just some of the athletes who made huge contributions to this 2021 feeling include Rhasidat Adeleke, Katie-George Dunlevy, Ellen Keane, Niamh Kilkenny, Leona Maguire, Katie McCabe, Eve McCrystal, Mona McSharry, and Katie Taylor. End-of-year lists and awards often cause ructions, and rightly so. Intense debates and high emotions signify that there are many worthy candidates — and, crucially, that people care. There is also an inherent difficulty in holding one form of sporting achievement up to another. They are all different; they are all brilliant; it is all subjective. In that spirit, below are the moments that hit me the hardest this year: The times when I felt not just poetry in motion, but progress in motion, too.
So yes, we’re at a tipping point. (The fact that there are two Tipp women on my list of personal highlights is purely coincidental.) One thing is clear: From here on out, there should be no limit to our ambition.
Rachael Blackmore and Minella Times win the Grand National
Forty starters, 15 finishers. Thirty-two jumps. Three female jockeys in the field, and one winner. A gutsy ride on the inside, timing her moves perfectly, taking the lead only at the second-last fence.
Listen. Rachael Blackmore has gotten all the accolades. RTÉ Sportsperson of the Year. Irish Times Sportswoman of the Year. BBC World Sports Star. With Honeysuckle, another ferocious female athlete, she won the Irish Champion Hurdle in Leopardstown in February and the Cheltenham Champion Hurdle in March, the first woman to do so. But the Grand National ‘first’ is my favourite, simply because the race itself is so claustrophobic and nail-biting, Blackmore’s victory a triumph of grit, resilience, and grace under pressure as well as skill.
I also love that she didn’t rest on her laurels, wasn’t content with those other incredible achievements already in the bag. Having the gumption to keep on winning is a rare gift (one also shown by certain Meath footballers, below). That Blackmore’s season also involved injury — a broken ankle and hip, on opposite sides — humanises her and reminds us of the dangers of the sport, of the phenomenal physical courage it requires.
We rarely get to watch men and women competing with each other on equal footing. As a kid growing up in Tipp, I prided myself on being able to hold my own with the lads on the hurling pitch. Like so many other hurling-mad girls in the 90s, I cut my teeth playing on underage hurling teams. I distinctly remember telling my parents that when I grew up, I wanted to play senior hurling for Moneygall. I didn’t see any reason why I should ever stop. But then puberty hits, and the gulf grows. It’s an unfortunate correlation that while the onset of puberty enhances a boy’s sporting performance, it can often hamper a girl’s. There comes a time when you just can’t compete anymore.
“I don’t feel male or female right now. I don’t even feel human.” I’ve never been on a horse, but when Rachael crossed the line in the Grand National, I — and countless other women — were right there with her.
Kellie Harrington wins Olympic gold
It’s hard to conceive of a sporting icon better tailored for the present moment than Kellie Harrington. It’s her unflappable nature, that serves her as well in front of the national media as it does in the ring. It’s her good cheer and her ease in her own skin. It’s her first act after winning gold: Hugging her opponent, Brazil’s Beatriz Ferreira. It’s her appeal as an inspiration not just to girls and young women, but LGBTQ kids, working-class kids, and sports-mad kids of all stripes. It’s the fact that she’s a hero twice over: A frontline worker and an Olympic champion.
And when you see an Irish boxer in red bouncing around an Olympic ring, it can’t help but remind you of past glories, too, a direct line from Michael Carruth to Katie Taylor and now to Kellie Harrington. Her victory nodded to the past but also opened up the future, consolidating Ireland as a force in women’s boxing.
Orla O’Dwyer wins AFLW title with Brisbane Lions
It’s an interesting trend that so many of our high-flying sportswomen excel in multiple codes. Nothing is certain in women’s sport, so there is a need to stay open, remain agile, and take every opportunity that comes. In another life, Katie Taylor could be helping Ireland qualify for the 2023 World Cup right now. Niamh Fahey, currently playing for Ireland, has an All-Ireland medal for Galway footballers in her back pocket.
Cora Staunton has four All-Ireland medals, but significant achievements in soccer, rugby, and AFLW, too.
Orla O’Dwyer is one of the most exciting of the new wave of Irishwomen to follow in Staunton’s footsteps and become a semi-professional footie player in Australia.
Pacy, aggressive, and with a cracking left foot, O’Dwyer wasn’t long nailing down her starting place with the Brisbane Lions, and was a lynchpin when they won the AFLW title in April. She became the second Irishwoman to win the title, after Ailish Considine in 2019. Then she was back home, helping to power Tipp to a senior camogie semi-final against eventual champions Galway, scoring two stunning points from play in the process; and helping Tipp ladies footballers retain their senior status for another year. Now she’s back in Oz; such is the life of a triple-coder. The new AFLW season begins on January 7 — a shot of sunshine and ferocious athleticism, right when we need it most.
Vikki Wall and Emma Duggan reach the summit with club and county
You couldn’t have written 2021 for these two. Faced with seemingly insurmountable tasks — halting a Dublin team on the hunt for a fifth All-Ireland in a row, and a Foxrock-Cabinteely side chasing a seventh Leinster club title in a row — the Dunboyne women rewrote the likely scripts, like two Davids felling Goliaths left, right and centre. Wall set the tone in September’s All-Ireland decider by winning the throw-up, bursting down the pitch and winning a free; Duggan showed similar purpose and fearlessness minutes later by intercepting a short kickout and floating it remorselessly into the net over Ciara Trant’s head. Both of them led the charge from there and covered every inch of grass. They finished the year under many Christmas trees on the front of Sportsfile’s A Season of Sundays, the first women to ever be featured on its cover.
Emma Slevin makes Irish gymnastics history
I loved gymnastics when I was a kid; or rather, my older sister Eileen did, and I was into everything she was. We recorded tape after tape of gymnastics from both the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, and we watched them back until the video turned grainy. Romania’s Lavinia Miloovici was our favourite from Barcelona, whereas the USA’s plucky Kerri Strug was our heroine from Atlanta, powering through a vault with an injured ankle to guarantee gold for Team USA. Sometimes, in between backflip attempts, we wondered why there was no one from Ireland to cheer on.
Enter Emma Slevin, still only 18. In May, she became the first Irishwoman to compete in the individual all-around finals at a Euros; in October, she equalled that feat at the world championships in Japan, just months after Douglas’s own Megan Ryan became only the second Irish female gymnast to compete at the Olympics. How extraordinary to watch girls in glittery green leotards turning out all those same impossible tumbles that Milosovici and Strug performed. Slevin and Ryan are going to be inspirations. Now that my nieces are into gymnastics, it means a lot that they have local heroes.
