Hurled into the big time, but sticking with hockey

EIMEAR CREGAN should rightly have had a camán as the central piece of equipment in her sporting life rather than a hockey stick.

The 23-year-old Limerick girl is niece of legendary former Limerick player and coach Eamonn Cregan, and as such, should probably be focused on inter-county camogie.

This weekend however, she lines out with the Irish ladies hockey team playing in the European championships in Dublin.

The quirk of fate is not lost on her, but despite still loving “all sports” she admits that hockey is her path, even if she cringes a little when reminded that in the marketing push for these championships, she has been made the public face of Irish ladies hockey.

Nevertheless, with the championships now imminent, her focus is on being a key element of the 18-strong Irish team that tackles France, Spain and Holland in the initial pool stages, kicking off against France at Belfield on Sunday.

“I played in the last Europeans in Barcelona,” she recalls, “and it was fantastic to be involved in a competition involving the top eight teams in Europe.

“This time around the excitement is different because we’re at home. Even so, the thing is that few people in Ireland ever get to see you play at international level.

“People know you’re doing all this training and stuff, but this is one way for us to show the home audience what all the training is about and what we can do.

“I come from a GAA background and while there is not as much hockey in Limerick as there would be in Cork, Dublin or Belfast, people have still taken a big interest in what I’m doing.”

Hockey in Ireland is undergoing massive change, but it still needs to really grab people’s imagination if it is to expand along the lines its administrators would like.

As Cregan admits, a good show in the Europeans would help enormously.

“The tournament will be getting TV coverage and hopefully that will help promote the game as a whole,” she says.

“Even in college after the club finals were broadcast, people were coming up and saying they’d seen the games on the telly and that it was so skilful and enjoyable. So hopefully after the Europeans, they’ll be taking an even bigger interest and hockey will take on a much higher profile.”

But what of the Irish chances? The Limerick player is confident.

“The bulk of this squad have been playing and training together for the last three or four years and during that period we’ve consistently been playing top opposition - the likes of England, Australia, Korea, Holland, Germany and teams like that - and we know a lot more about them now.

“Take Holland, for example, and it is no longer a case of ‘oh my God, it’s the Dutch, what are we going to do’. We know how they play, their style of play, how to break them down and we are getting much better at playing them.

“It’s the same with the Germans and while we didn’t play particularly well against them two weeks ago, we have drawn with them a couple of times lately and that gives you an automatic lift because you know you can compete.

“The majority of our squad have developed through Riet [Kuper, the Irish coach] so we’re all used to the style of hockey she wants to play and we know what she wants.

“It’s different when you go back to your club, but with Riet we know what’s expected, we know what Riet demands and we know the style of hockey we want to play.”

An all-rounder in sporting terms, Cregan admits that she should probably have ended up playing camogie rather than hockey, but she says that it was more by accident than design that she ended up as one of Ireland’s top stars.

“A friend of mine who lives nearby used to come and get me to play with Lansdowne and although I didn’t want to do it because I’d been doing gymnastics on a Saturday and just wanted Sunday to chill out, I went along.

“I didn’t have a clue about hockey when I started, no idea whatsoever, but I had the hand-eye coordination and I just got to love it.

“It all started from there and the next thing I found myself being picked for a Munster trial and then I was on the Munster team.

“I was thinking this wasn’t right at all, because I’d come from nowhere. I started with no expectation and I was just floating along - but then it got very serious and after a stint with the Irish U-18 team, Riet called me into the senior squad. It was pretty unbelievable.”

Having undergone trials with the senior team, Eimear was capped for the squad before she was 20, but the fact she was studying for a Sports Science degree at UL turned out to be a fortunate coincidence.

“The people in college really helped me out with things like training, weight training, diet and how to manage my time, and I have to say I was really lucky to have that sort of back-up.

“On the playing front, initially I was getting pitch time more to give others a rest really, but you just take what you can get at that stage and see how it goes.”

Playing right-mid or right wing, in the build-up to the Barcelona Europeans, Cregan suddenly found herself an integral part of the team and, now two years on, she has over 60 caps to her credit - all at the tender age of only 23.

Right now though, she is focused on one thing.

She finishes her degree this year and has plenty of opportunities opening up in front of her.

But in the coming week, the only things she wants to see opening up in front of her are the French, Spanish and Dutch defences.