This week, Ireland's women's hockey team seeks World Cup qualification in Rome. Mary Hannigan meets the new captain, Wexford player Linda Caulfield, and asks her about the twin pressures of leading an international team and leading a normal life
Since she first played underage hockey for Ireland when she was 14, Linda Caulfield's life has been measured in international tournaments, rather than birthdays. She celebrated her 21st while on Irish duty at the 2000 Olympic qualifier - training in the morning, and in the afternoon wandering about the English village of Stony Stratford, which rather modestly describes itself as "the Jewel of Milton Keynes". You'd want, you'd have to conclude, to be committed to the cause to spend your 21st birthday ambling about Milton Keynes' jewel. "Actually, a lot of my friends say I should be committed," says the 27-year-old from Wexford who, in January, was named Irish captain.
The decision by Ireland's Dutch coach, Riet Kuper, to choose Caulfield as successor to the retired Lynsey McVicker completed an extraordinary turnaround in the player's fortunes, less than eight years after she had been unexpectedly dropped from Ireland's under-21 squad for the European Championships in Belfast. Until then Caulfield, regarded as one of the country's finest schools' players, had rarely experienced disappointment in sport.
"It was a very tough time because hockey was just my life; I was addicted to it," she says. "It happened for a reason, I suppose, and I learnt to have a life without hockey at that time, but you can take these things the wrong way. I've known young players before who've developed eating disorders and have had all kinds of self-esteem problems when it has happened to them. I think some coaches should be very wary when they're dealing with young girls because you just don't know what way they're going to take it."
Within a year, though, Caulfield, then 19, was called up to the senior Irish squad and, four months later, won her first cap. "When I first came into the squad, Julie Stewart had around 83 caps and I remember thinking, 'My God, she must have been here forever'. I just couldn't imagine how you could get that many caps," she says. Now, Caulfield has 125 caps to her name.
Since making her debut, Caulfield, who graduated from Trinity College in 2000 with a degree in Environmental Science and now works as a medical sales representative, has missed just six internationals in seven years, due to injuries and work commitments.
Like every other Irish hockey international, male or female, she uses her holiday time to go on international duty. When the holidays run out, taking unpaid leave from work, if that is an option, is the only way the players can continue their sporting careers. If it's not an option then the players have to retire, as many have been forced to do in recent years.
Already this year, in preparation for the World Cup qualifier currently being played in Rome, the Irish women's squad has travelled to Spain, South Africa, Argentina and England for training camps and tournaments. Caulfield has just two days' holidays left for 2006.
"But it's the same for all of us, and it's a decision we choose to make," she says. "Nobody is forcing us to play international hockey, but, of course, it would be fantastic if we received more support. There is talk of players being employed by hockey-friendly companies; ones that would allow us time off to play for our country, but that's further down the line.
"I love my job and my career, but if I could have gone straight from college to full-time sport for three or four years, I would have loved that. Naturally, you're never going to make money from playing hockey, but just to have the chance to really dedicate yourself to it, full-time, to see where that would take you as a player and a team, would be amazing.
"But until that opportunity arises for players, we have to keep going as we are, trying to fit everything in. And trying to compete against countries that support their teams to the point where they can prepare for major tournaments as full-time players." One such example is Azerbaijan, which is drawn in the same pool as Ireland in Rome. While that country's men are ranked joint-59th in the world, just ahead of the less than mighty Macau and Finland, Azerbaijan's women's team has risen to 19th, having received an extraordinary level of support from its government, whose "tax minister" also happens to be the president of the Azerbaijan Hockey Federation (AHF), and from president Ilham Aliyev.
The players are sponsored by Ata Holdings, the parent company of Ata Airlines which had plenty of loose change to play with after earning $123 million transporting American troops to the Gulf, as well as more than $145 million for other work for the Pentagon in 2003. That support allowed the Azerbaijan team to turn professional, the players living together in Baku and training twice a day. "They have their own cook and their own bus to take them to and from practice. Everything is provided for them," said Rashad Alizade, general secretary of the AHF. That, then, is how Azerbaijan's hockey players are supported - and they are, supposedly, one the world game's minnows.
"It sounds alright, doesn't it," laughs Caulfield, "especially having your own cook. Yeah, of course it would be great to get that kind of support, and they'll be yet another team that was ranked below us, like Ukraine and Lithuania, which will suddenly become really tough to beat because of how they are developing. In that sense we are getting left behind - England and Scotland get huge support from Lottery funding - but that's how it is in Irish amateur sport. There's not a whole lot we players can do about it.
"But it won't stop us hanging in there. You just get an adrenalin rush playing in these tournaments that you don't get any other time. There's nothing else in life that matches it. I don't know how much longer I can play at this level, considering the commitment that's required, but I really can't imagine life without it." And you probably couldn't imagine what you'd do with all the free time? "Ah, I could," she laughs.