Ireland Hockey hero Katie Mullan thrilled to play part in Eoghan Rua journey

The captain of the Ireland women’s hockey team is taking time with her first love, camogie

Sat, 05 Mar, 2022 - 06:25

Daragh Ó Conchúir

When the captain of the Ireland women’s hockey team was little, she did not dream of World Cups and Olympic Games.

Instead, growing up on the family farm between Coleraine and Portstewart, her life beat to the rhythms of hurling and camogie, mixing it with the boys right up to 16. It was family and friends. It was Eoghan Rua.

In time, Katie Mullan’s ability with another stick pulled her away and she has led her country to phenomenal success, earned a huge profile and became a role model not just for young girls but anyone with big dreams. And done it all with that broad, beaming smile that lightens up the day.

The 27-year-old has led her team to a World Cup final, to an Olympic Games and is now in the middle of preparations for this year’s World Cup in the Netherlands and Spain in July. Those aren’t the only preparations taking place, however.

Mullan is now just two caps shy of a double century for Ireland, having made her debut in August 2012 against Wales as an 18-year-old. She had garnered a second AIB All-Ireland intermediate club camogie title with Eoghan Rua the previous March but the focus on hockey reduced her to a substitute’s role on both occasions, though that didn’t stop her scoring the winning goal in the 2011 semi-final.

The bonds were never severed. So when she needed them, they were there and she invariably repaid that with a reprisal of the nose for goal that has characterised her entire camogie career.

When her world was rocked by being dropped from the national squad for the European Championships in 2013, she was a key part of the team that secured the Ulster senior title – scoring 2-1 in the final – and they gave All-Ireland champions Milford the fright of their lives before the Cork side completed a two-in-a-row at Croke Park. The following season she was named player of the match after scoring 1-4 in the county final to see off a Slaughtneil side building towards history as All-Ireland senior three-in-a-row champions.

In an interview with Séamas McAleenan in the Irish News this time last year, Mullan said that camogie had saved her at this time, had massaged her bruised ego and rebuilt her confidence.

This time around, it’s different. She needed a break after the rewarding but tiring Olympic cycle, and the World Cup qualifier that followed Tokyo. And so, having attended the county final, conversations took place. Ireland’s head coach, Sean Dancer was amenable.

It was an early Christmas present for Eoghan Rua manager, Brendan McLernan and Mullan has been crucial in helping the team reach today’s junior A final against Clanmaurice of Kerry at the O’Raghallaighs grounds in Drogheda (12.30pm – livestream Camogie Association YouTube), earning a place at corner-forward in the Gaelic Life club team of the year.

“The Olympics is a four-year cycle and for us it was a five-year cycle with the delay so it was very intense,” explains Mullan. “A lot of the team took time away and a break. For me, to pick up my hurl and play camogie with my close friends that I grew up with was a really good way for me to find that freshness and renew that energy towards the busy hockey calendar this year. It’s been fantastic.

“I watched the girls play in the county final in September, and just really got an itch to be back playing camogie. So that was when the wee seed was planted, and it’s been quite a good year and quite a good run. It’s in the last month that it’s sort of really clashed for me, but with an understanding coach, with it being an All-Ireland, he’s been very supportive in that.”

"These are girls I have been in constant contact with and been learning from over the last ten years, when I haven’t even been playing. So to be back in a changing room with them is fantastic."

She has noted not just the increasing physical contact of camogie but the endurance as well, with the days of being stuck in one position consigned to the past. And the change in rule relating to dropping the hurley has caused her some problems.

Meanwhile she is combining part-time work with Axial 3D in Belfast as a medical visualisation engineer with the two-to-three-day weekly hockey camps – they travelled to France the day after the Ulster final. Some might view the camogie as an unnecessary complication but that is to miss the point. This stint is probably concluding at just about the right time, with major hockey internationals coming up later this month against GB and the Netherlands.

And when it comes to value and importance, there's not a big difference between the environment around one of the best hockey teams in the world and a junior camogie squad.

"It’s what it means to us in this moment and that’s an awful lot, especially off the back of the struggles of the last two, three years. It’s been hard for clubs to stay connected and we found the last couple of months, and the little journey we’ve been able to take the club on is fantastic, and I’m just delighted to be a small part of that.”