This isn’t a come-and-get-me plea to any AFLW clubs but Ciara Trant has come to realise that she’d love to be a professional player.
She’s a schoolteacher, as it happens, but for five days after last month’s Leinster football final win over Meath, she lived the life of a full-time professional. And thrived.
The Dublin ladies had a few quid in the bank, saved up throughout the pandemic era when various trips and functions were cancelled, so opted to use it on a warm-weather camp in Portugal to set them up for the beginning of the All-Ireland series.
Foreign camps are still viewed as a luxury in the men’s game and Dublin may very well be the only ladies’ team this year that enjoys such an experience. It’s too early to say if it was money well spent or not but the early signs are positive with Dublin on the verge of wrapping up their All-Ireland quarter-final place ahead of Sunday’s tie against Tipperary.
“Hopefully this is something that becomes more commonplace in the women’s game because it’s a great opportunity,” said Dublin goalkeeper Trant. “For us, from my point of view anyway, it means absolutely nothing if we don’t get the return from it. We have to justify the sponsorship and the support that was put into it that made it possible and the work that the management team put into organising it. It was a fantastic experience but it means nothing if we don’t get results.”
It’s an insight into just how motivated Dublin are to regain the Brendan Martin Cup this summer that they chose to splash the cash on a punishing training camp than on sinking sangrias in the sun.
“We thoroughly enjoyed it and I learned from it that I’d love to be a professional athlete like that, it was right up my street,” smiled Trant, in goals for each of Dublin’s four All-Ireland wins between 2017 and 2020. “We probably were a bit lethargic during the week after, in terms of our training, trying to recover from it, because it was intense. We were just very, very fortunate to go abroad and we didn’t take it for granted.”
The sense that Dublin are pulling out all the stops this season to wrestle the All-Ireland title back from their noisy neighbours is strong. The expectation was that if they’d landed the five-in-a-row last year as anticipated, manager Mick Bohan and several of his senior stalwarts may have bowed out on that historic platform.
Sináad Aherne and Lyndsey Davey, 36 and 32 respectively, certainly don’t owe anyone anything having been playing for Dublin for nearly 20 years now, yet there they were last weekend against Cavan, forming a lethal full-forward line alongside Hannah Tyrrell with a combined age of 99.
Between them, the trio contributed 1-8 as Dublin opened their All-Ireland campaign with a 5-14 to 2-4 win. Meanwhile, at the other end of the pitch, and the age spectrum, Jess Tobin is a promising rookie. Carla Rowe, just back from injury, hit Cavan for 2-3.
“When the team is announced after training for a match, I always kind of look at it and I gain such confidence from it, going ‘wow, look at the players that we have, like, aren’t we so lucky here in Dublin?’” said Trant. “I get great confidence from just being part of that.”
Trant herself, the All Star goalkeeper in 2017 and 2018, has emerged as the safest pair of hands in Dublin having initially filled the vacancy left by Tyrrell, who began her life with Dublin as a goalkeeper before she left for rugby in 2014.
“Hannah did me a favour and signed a rugby Sevens contract, that helped me get my foot in the door a little bit,” said Trant.
But there have been bad days too, like the early goal scored by Emma Duggan for Meath in last year’s All-Ireland final, an audacious lob over Trant’s head or a point attempt that dropped short, depending on your persuasion. Either way it was a blow that Dublin didn’t recover from that day.
“It’s not a good memory,” winced Trant. “Ah look, you park it straight away. You can get emotional, you can beat yourself up but being able to take a step back and look at the bigger picture is important and, for me, that’s what motivates me every year. It’s just, ‘right, I’m playing for Dublin’ and not taking that for granted.”
AIG ambassador Ciara Trant of Dublin was speaking at the launch of AIG’s new For Times Like These campaign.
