CELEBRITY FANS: MARY WHITE, TD, Politician, 61, Hockey:The Green Party deputy leader was on the Leinster and Irish Universities team while at Trinity before leading Hermes to cup success
How did you get into hockey?
My father was a very good hockey player at Trinity College and my brother, Alistair Conan, played for Ireland. We played as children. We’d a long, long path in our garden at home in Co Wicklow. My brother and my sisters and my father used to practise dribbling up and down this path. I suppose I started when I was about six or seven.
What were your career highlights?
While I was at university, I became captain of the Trinity ladies hockey team and I got a “pink” for sporting excellence because I was also on the Leinster Senior Interprovincial team during my time at Trinity. I also played on the Irish Universities hockey team. Then, when I left college I played for Hermes Hockey club in Dublin. The year I captained Hermes we won the All-Ireland senior cup for the first time. The year we won the cup was 1979, I think.
Do you remember any moments from that campaign?
I remember in the final I was playing on the left-half and someone dribbled past our left-back with the ball and I ran back to cover and the goalkeeper was out of position.
One of the opposing forwards shot at goal and it hit my foot which gave them a penalty stroke, a one-on-one. I thought, “Oh, my God. Here’s the captain of the team. The ball has hit off my hockey boot and I’ve given away a penalty stroke. That’s it now.”
In the final, in the second half, with 10 minutes to go, it’s nil-all, and they have a penalty stroke. I thought I’d caused our defeat.
But the goalkeeper saved it and within five minutes we’d scored the winning goal. I remember it vividly. That goalkeeper – her name was Paula Daly – she was just our heroine for the afternoon.
Do you still keep in touch with that team?
We had a reunion of the winning cup team a few years ago. The current first 11 of Hermes were there. Foolishly, I threw down a challenge that we were a better team than they were now, but they haven’t taken up the challenge yet!
What makes a good hockey player?
You need good hand-eye co-ordination and physical agility with very flexible wrists because you’re passing the ball and flicking it a lot.
You also need high endurance; an ability to run and dribble the ball at the one time; and a good appreciation of spatial strategy where if you’re running with the ball you have to know where to pass it.
It’s a bit like physical chess. You’ve got to be able to pass the ball to a space where you know somebody’s going to run onto it.
Forgive me for being sexist, but for a young girl to go out and risk getting whacked across the shins – that doesn’t sound very appealing. You have to avoid the whacking. When I started off in Trinity there weren’t even shin-pads or gum-shields.
We were a hardy breed. You had to get out of harm’s way, but it’s not like camogie or hurling where you can raise the stick over your shoulder. You’ve to keep it below your shoulder. Otherwise it’s a foul. That saves you from a lot of trouble. I never got injured once all through my years of playing.
What was the most irritating thing about the sport when you were playing?
The weather. We didn’t have all-weather pitches in those days so we had a lot of cancellations.
What were the pitches you played on like?
Some of the pitches were like ploughed fields, which weren’t kept well. Others were very good grass pitches. Then we moved onto a surface like a hard tennis court. There was shale on it. It was all-weather. Unfortunately I had just given it up when the astro-turf pitches, which are superb, arrived.
What was the most unusual thing you’ve seen on a hockey pitch?
A cow. When I was at boarding school at the Ursuline Convent, we used to play our rival school in Newtown in Co Waterford and occasionally stock would wander over the pitch. Between these invasions and the cow turds, it wasn’t the best. But I have to say we liked going to Newtown because I was at a convent boarding school and Newtown was a mixed school so it had its compensations.
What was it like for the opposition coming to play against your school?
Girls liked coming to the convent in Waterford to play us because we provided fantastic hockey teas. You’ve never seen the like.
They were straight out of comics – you’d have cakes and sandwiches and buns and biscuits. Everyone wanted to get on the hockey team because you had a special tea and when you’re at boarding school, food is very important.
In conversation with Richard Fitzpatrick.
