'I hope I did the jersey proud': Laura Treacy on taking over from Gemma O’Connor at centre back

Cork's Laura Treacy wearing the number six vacated by Gemma O'Connor on her retirement. Picture: INPHO/Laszlo Geczo

Laura Treacy messaged an old friend on the day she made her debut at centre-back for the Cork senior camogie team.

“I texted Gemma after I put on the No 6 jersey for the first time and I was just like: ‘I hope I did the jersey proud’,” she recalled. “I was putting it on and Orla Cronin and Chloe Sigerson were sitting next to me in the dressing room, and I was like: ‘My God, this is Gemma’s jersey, I better play well.’

Such reverence is not surprising. The Gemma in question is Gemma O’Connor, who won a staggering nine All-Irelands and 11 All-Stars in an illustrious career. Not alone was she one of the finest centre-backs in the game but an ever-present since Treacy made her debut. Or she was until her retirement in February, the latest star to hang up the boots.

“Gemma O’Connor, Aoife Murray, Orla Cotter, and Briege Corkery will go down in the annals of their sport as supreme players and leaders. Pamela Mackey is a significant loss too as a four-time All-Star defender who has taken a year out of the game,” Treacy said ahead of tomorrow’s National League final against Galway in Nowlan Park.

“All these big names and leaders are gone. It is a new challenge for someone like me, Orla Cronin, and Amy O’Connor to try and fill their boots and represent them and Cork the best we can.”

Not that it has been all smooth-sailing. Treacy’s stock and trade was as a full-back but was reallocated to O’Connor’s old stomping ground earlier in the league. The experiment came to a sudden halt six minutes into their group tie against Waterford when she suffered a head wound while jostling under a ball with Niamh Rockett.

“I was split just between my eyebrows. It’s kind of like a Harry Potter sign so all the girls are laughing at me at the moment. I went back to training on Tuesday night so they all thought it was hilarious and singing the Harry Potter songs and stuff. I’ve known Niamh for many a year. We would be good friends. There are no hard feelings, it was just one of those things.”

Her outlook should come as no surprise, given the 26-year-old is a nurse specialising in colposcopy at St Finbarr’s Hospital, as an associated unit of the Cork University Maternity Hospital.

“I would be dealing with a lot of people who are probably around my age. I see the worst of what is out there. I would see everybody who would have an abnormal smear test. The majority of people don’t have abnormal smears, but it does get into your head that there are so many people with them. That change of rolling out the HPV vaccine has made it more of a common talking point with young people.

“When I was in school, I was probably one of the first group of girls who would have been rolled out with that HPV vaccine. I feel like cervical cancer has been discussed with girls since then, and now everybody who is 12, in first year of school, is getting the HPV vaccine, girls and boys.

“So it is more normal because all of these 12 and 13-year-olds are talking about cervical cancer, talking about HPV. When before, there would nearly have been a stigma around HPV because it is technically sexually transmitted, well it is skin to skin, but it is sexually transmitted mainly. People think then it is an STD or something when it is not. It is a virus, it is like catching a cold or the flu.

“It is just about making things normal and then the awareness then comes around after that once people are talking about it at all.”