Twin-win situation as McAnespies team up for club and county

THE GENERATION GAME BRENDA MCANESPIE AND HER TWIN DAUGHTERS AOIFE AND CIARAIT WAS October, 1996, on the eve of the women's All-Ireland football final, when we last met up with Brenda McAnespie. Having lost the previous two finals to Waterford, McAnespie's Monaghan made the breakthrough that year, beating Laois to win their first senior title, before retaining it 12 months later.

When we met her that day she had her hands full, literally, carrying her two-year-old daughter, Shauna, as she talked about the match ahead. Her indefatigable six-year-old twins, though, occupied themselves, Aoife and Ciara kicking a ball around the field. They came by it honestly, it seemed.

"The wee ones will probably be playing along with me in no time," their mother laughed.

Fast forward 10 years and when Emyvale took to the field in the All-Ireland Club Championships their line-up included B McAnespie, A McAnespie and C McAnespie. The "wee ones' weren't just their mother's daughters any more, they were her team-mates too.

"At the beginning it was probably a bit more strange for them than it was for me," she said, "I suppose there was always the chance they'd be a wee bit embarrassed, but it was fine, we just got on with it and played our football - and anyway, we were all in different parts of the team so we weren't bumping into each other too much."

Or within earshot?

"No, I wasn't giving them any advice on the field; that was up to the manager. We all just concentrated on doing our own jobs."

Eighteen next month, the twins, who are in their Leaving Cert year in St Louis, Monaghan, made it onto the senior county panel last year and are already showing enough promise to suggest possible careers as fruitful as that of their mother.

"I just finished up with Monaghan two years ago," said McAnespie, who won one junior and two senior All-Ireland titles with her county.

"Every year was meant to be my last, but then they'd ask you to just play one more and on you'd go. You get so used to the training, the matches, the friendships, it's hard to give it up, but I've got used to it and now I just enjoy watching the girls play. They're part of a very young Monaghan team and they're learning. It's all new to them but all the young ones are gaining confidence with every match. The standard's so high now around the country it's hard, but there's a lot of talent on this Monaghan side. I don't offer them any advice, maybe just a few ideas, but they do their own thing."

Since 1996, when Aoife, Ciara, Shauna and baby Ryan made up the McAnespie clan, Eimear (now nine) and Aisling (six) have arrived, and will be joined soon by a new member of the family.

"Three-and-a-half weeks to go," said McAnespie of her seventh child's imminent arrival.

Inevitably the new addition to the McAnespie family will, once he/she is on his/her feet, be immersed in sport, an abiding passion for Brenda, her husband, Vincent, and all their children.

"It's brilliant that they're all involved in sport in one way or another," she said. "More than anything it gives them less time to think about other things. They're active, fit, healthy and, as I know from my own experience, their clubs, whether it's Gaelic, athletics (with Glaslough Harriers) or whatever, give them a social life and plenty of friends."

Shauna, now 14, plays football too (she was on the Monaghan under-14 team last year) and is a gifted athlete, but health problems, which have necessitated monthly visits to Belfast for treatment, have given her a different battle to fight.

She is, though, overcoming her illness, and is, says her mother, "doing well", to the point where she is able to return to her sporting ways.

Brenda's experience with her daughter merely served to heighten her concerns for health services in Monaghan. In 2004, for example, she was one of four women who went to the High Court to fight for the restoration of maternity services to Monaghan General Hospital.

A Sinn Féin councillor on Monaghan County Council since 1999, she divides her time between her political duties, shuttling her children to sporting events ("we're going to have to teach them to drive, if we ever find the time") and her own club football.

"Well, I'm hoping to get back with Emyvale in July or August, if I'm fit to play. You do miss it, especially when it's been such a part of your life for so many years," said the woman who was a member, with her friend Maureen Boylan, of her school's boys' under-12 team that won the 1978 county championship.

Such pioneering paved the way for the likes of Aoife and Ciara (left): "They were watching me play football from when they were babies, and they were playing football from when they were 10. It makes me proud now to see them play for Monaghan, they're good girls, and the football will give them a great life."