Girls Aloud

ON June 17 2001 Karen O’Brien walked away from international hockey. At just 27 years of age she was probably just coming to the peak of her career as an international striker, but the burden of being an amateur player in an almost entirely professional set-up with Ireland was becoming too much.

She had to make a terrible decision: fulfil her career potential or jack it in for a short-term period with her name in lights as a top-line hockey international. In the end it was no choice.

It was not a decision that Riet Kuper, Ireland's Dutch coach particularly wanted to hear, but it was one she had to accept because Karen, like most of the other women on the team, was making huge sacrifices for effectively no gain.

However, with many of the squad being students, the burden of time off was not an issue for them, while many others were employed in jobs which allowed them take unpaid leave (or even paid leave) to meet the demanding training and playing schedules international hockey requires.

Unfortunately for Karen (who was then O'Brien, but shortly to become Bateman), she fitted into neither bracket and she simply could not get the time off work that was necessary to sustain top level hockey.

She was about to get married and take on the burden of a mortgage on top of car loans, and whatever else, and she could not afford to be away from her work as much as was necessary. She walked away.

Karen was watching from the sidelines as not only did the women's team qualify for the World Championships in Australia last year, but also as her husband and club-mate at Cork Harlequins, underlined his own international ambitions with a string of excellent performances for the Irish men's team. If the decision to stop playing internationally was painful, looking in from the outside was even worse.

But Kuper is not someone who simply accepts no for an answer and she finally persuaded Karen to come back. Kuper had been in regular contact with her former star forward and her persistence finally paid off a couple of months ago. Karen Bateman returned to the Irish international squad.

The pain of the original decision still lives with Karen though.

"It was simple," she recalls. "I just had to make a decision between work or hockey and in the end my career had to take priority. I work in web design for what is a small enough company and there is nobody there to cover for me when I'm not in. There were 90 days last year required for players involved in the hockey World Cup and there was no way I could manage it.

"Hockey was a luxury I could not afford, essentially. It was a viciously tough decision to make at the time. I had worked as a graphic designer for two years and I made a decision to give that up and go and do a web design course and at the time that was a huge decision. Because I was making such a sacrifice giving up work to go and do this I decided from there on in my career would have to come first."

But watching from home as her friends and colleagues on the Irish team took on the World out in Perth nearly drove her nuts. "I knew all the girls involved in the World Cup and I was on the net all the time following what was going on and the girls were texting me with, like, what the real stories were behind the scenes, so it was tough alright. When I look at some of the girls who came through around the same time as I left, they have the same number of caps as I do now and there is the feeling that maybe I should have double the number of caps that I do."

There is no doubting the honesty in Karen's voice when she says she was "gagging" to get back. Riet Kuper asked her back on several occasions, but until very recently she was not able to do so.

"Now she has given me a fantastic opportunity to give it another lash and it is fantastic that she has stuck with me. It's a brilliant opportunity with a short, intense build-up and work allowing me time off."

After a two-year hiatus, however, are there not various problems relating to fitness, stamina and so forth?

"I can't sit still anyway to be honest and I've been training all summer. In any event, I would not allow myself become unfit. I've had that kind of training built into me since I was at U-16 level, so it is hard to stop. I had trials at U-16 level and I played U-18 international, played U-21s and right through the grades. I never really had a summer off, so when you do get one off, you don't know what to do with yourself.

"I've kept up gym work and weight training and so when Riet did ask me to come back, I was able to say well, at least I have stamina. The rest was just a question of getting up to the ball speed the Irish girls are at. When you play a club team in Cork it is at one level, but when you play teams at international level like England and Holland, it is another level. I know there is more in me still, my first touch needs to improve, but that will come. That's not something I have to learn."

Her marriage to a fellow hockey international has been a benefit in fitness terms because, even though herself and Wes go to different gyms, they play for the same club and give each other constant support. But, equally, because of their commitments to the mens' and womens' sides respectively, for some time now it has seemed they've been like ships passing in the night.

"Yes, it is definitely a help being married to an international hockey player in terms of keeping fitness levels up. But, there are down sides to it too. I was away recently for a week and the following week Wes was away. But, the two of us will be in Barcelona and I'll be able to support him and he'll be able to support me."

"Actually him being involved in the Irish mens' team for the last year has been very tough for me because I've seen him go through the highs and lows of the hockey that I was missing out on."

When Karen got the call from Riet Kuper as did Jenny Burke who had gone into semi-retirement after the World Cup she told the players it would just be for the Europeans and that they would look at the situation after Barcelona. But, with the Olympics on the horizon, the schedule will just get manic at the back end of the year.

"That's a massive commitment two-week training camp in December, two-week training camp in January, three-week training camp in February and then five weeks off for the tournament. Nobody can afford that sort of time unless you win the Lotto," Karen says.

For all that, however, her focus is on next week and, as a returnee, it has been interesting for her to see the developments in the squad in her absence.

"I think Ireland has come on in leaps and bounds. Even in the time I've been involved, and Riet has had a massive influence on all of that. She gets the highest standard out of everyone. The financial back-up is not there to allow the players give the necessary commitment, but at the same time the results have come over the last few years. Riet has demanded that trips be organised to America, to Holland, to Spain, in order to get the players to the required levels."

The coach wanted Karen and Jenny back for their goal-scoring abilities and for Karen to score against England in a recent friendly during an acclimatisation trip to Barcelona, was sweet indeed.

"Yes, to do it in my second game back was a big plus and to do it against England was even sweeter. It cheered us up and gave us a realisation of what we can do."

The last time the Irish ladies team had a fully dedicated sponsor was for the World Cup in Dublin in 1995, but there are other, smaller sponsors involved now and things continue to improve, but hockey in Ireland still does not have the broad level of support that other sports have.

For Karen, small things have improved for the better, like being able to keep your own gear. "Obviously there is stuff like Sports Council funding and things like that, but it is definitely better than it was before. It is still a damn-sight less than is available in Holland or England, but it is better than it has been. I mean, the Irish girls were in Holland recently and the Dutch team arrived and they were all in their own cars supplied by the hockey union and they all train full-time and they are effectively professionals, but then they are second in the world.

"I'd love to be a professional hockey player and if I could do it I would. The other side of it is though, when I get to 30 and I'm retiring, I'll have something to fall back on. There's good points and bad points.

"Since I've been out, the squad has grown up and it is as full time as it can be while everyone is still working. We are training like professionals and we are doing gym work two and three times a week, we're running four days a week, we're playing hockey four days a week. It is very, very intensive and there is a lot of other things involved as well, like dietary stuff, but I've had that drilled into me since I was involved with the U-18s. There's other things as well like how to recover after games, warms ups, what to do at night and so on. It's all scheduled out for you. Most free time is spent in bed, to be honest."

KAREN got into hockey because her mum was a coach and also played at representative level for Munster. She went to school at the well known hockey academy Mount Mercy where she became friends with current Ireland captain Rachel Kohler. "I joined Harlequins along with her and that was quite odd at the time because a lot of Mount Mercy girls were joining Belvedere. But I've been at Harlequins since and I wouldn't dream of leaving," she says.

But her focus is on Ireland now, although the fact that Rachel, along with Elaine Brommell and Jenny Burke also represent the club on the Irish squad, it a big help.

"We have a tough group to play in out in Barcelona, but we've set high goals and we want to achieve them. A lot of the squad are there from two years ago anyway, but it was a big thing to go back with a club-mate like Jenny Burke, and to have girls like Rachel and Elaine in the squad when we returned really was a big help. Jenny had been involved in the World Cup and she was more immediately familiar with the squad, so that helped make it easy to go back. But the atmosphere in the squad is very good."

The final preparations have been completed and the Irish squads travel within the next day or so to Barcelona. For Karen, this is something really special.

"I can't wait. It's a second chance I thought I'd never get and I'm going to make the most of every minute. I'm more relaxed than I have been in previous years and I've always been fighting for something and I still am but even if I'm sitting in the stands watching, I'm going to enjoy every moment of it."