With an All-Ireland winning hurling father and hockey international mother, playing sport was always going to be a given for the six McGrath sisters as children.
“We had no real option to be honest, but, in hindsight, it was a great thing because we all love it now,” says Niamh McGrath, the eldest of this band of sisters who were all on the field at one time during the All-Ireland club senior camogie final last December.
Ranging in age from 32 to 17, they were playing for the victorious Sarsfields team – a team managed by their father Michael, who won two all-Ireland hurling medals with Galway in the 1980s.
The sisters were brought by their mother, Geraldine (née Kilkelly) to a variety of sports as children, including hockey, badminton, basketball and athletics. “To get kind of pigeon-holed into one sport when you’re small is not good,” says McGrath.
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She played hockey up to the age of 12 in Galway city and sometimes regrets not trying harder at a game that offered the opportunity of travel and representing Ireland. But, living in rural east Galway, camogie was always going to win out, as that is what her friends were playing. Yet, McGrath recalls classmates dropping out of sport in their early teens. It is a trend that she believes, from talking to her younger sisters, is not as marked now. Even if teenage girls are not involved in groups sports, they are doing gym sessions and going for walks.
With her younger sisters’ peers, she sees, ‘it is not about being thin, it is about being strong. When I was at school it was all about being skinny’
“They’re a lot more active than when I was going to secondary school; more conscious about their health, so it’s brilliant in that way.”
With her younger sisters’ peers, she sees, “it is not about being thin, it is about being strong. When I was at school it was all about being skinny”.
With female sport receiving more publicity, girls have role models. “You don’t really aspire to be something that you don’t see. So yes, it’s definitely going in the right direction, but there’s a lot more to be done.”
An estimated one in five children drop out of sports between primary and secondary school, according to Sport Ireland research published in 2022. Those who give up sport, or who never participated in the first place, are more likely to be girls.
Rates of quitting tend to be higher in individual pursuits such as swimming, dance and athletics than they are in team-based activities such as soccer, Gaelic football, hurling and camogie, according to last year’s Stop the Drop report, commissioned by Allianz. It is presumed that having friends involved and a sense of community encourage children to keep up their participation. That has certainly been McGrath’s experience. She still enjoys friendship with girls that she started playing camogie with at the age of five or six. “We’ve come all the way through and we’re so close and that is really because of camogie.”
[ Interest in women’s sport in Ireland is rising as the GAA launches new national league season ]
In team sport, “the pressure is shared and it’s a collective effort. It’s just a lot tougher if you’re in an individual sport. I don’t know how anyone does it really. You can’t share the bad days and the good days.”
It has also given her skills that she now applies to her legal career. “I think if you’re exposed to team sports when you’re young, then it’s easier to get on with people in the work environment; to just give and take and realise that it does not all revolve around you,” says McGrath, who is a solicitor with Mercers in Dublin.
A Galway county player from the age of 16 until her late 20s, she believes it is “counterproductive” for Leaving Cert students to give up sport so they have more time for studying. Physical activity is an outlet, she points out. “Straight away you feel better after exercising. The Leaving Cert is not the be all and end all anyway.”
I just think the guidelines are kind of outdated now in terms of pregnant women. Before, it was like, you can’t do anything
Just as the transition to secondary school and the later teen years can be pressure points for quitting sport, so too is motherhood. While McGrath has been a role model for girls coming through the local camogie ranks, she looked to her own role models for returning to the game soon after the birth of her first child, Ruadhán, a year ago. Other Galway county players, such as Niamh Kilkenny and Annmarie Starr, showed it can be done, she says. “Then you wouldn’t feel self-conscious and [think] I’m going back too soon, or are people going to be saying, I’m not minding myself?” Having a baby used to end most women’s sporting careers, she suggests. “I know it did for my mother, more or less.”
McGrath didn’t exactly put her feet up during pregnancy either. “I just think the guidelines are kind of outdated now in terms of pregnant women. Before, it was like, you can’t do anything.” She stopped playing contact in the first semester but continued training. “I only stopped running a week or two before [the birth]. I just felt good.” Her father was concerned and telling her to mind herself, she says, “because he had that outdated view”.
However, she stresses that every woman is different. “I’m not trying to be like, ‘Oh, look at me …’ Just because I come from a sporty environment anyway, I would have been fit.”
It was good for her mental health too. “I’m in bad form when I don’t exercise.”
She and her partner, Mike Kennedy, celebrated Ruadhán’s first birthday on February 9th last. It was a good time of year to have him, she says, as serious preparations for the club championships do not usually start until about June.
She was back walking every day within a week or two of giving birth. By her six-week checkup, she was feeling “grand” and, after the doctor cleared her, she started running again. “I felt perfect. I took it easy the first couple of weeks; I increased every day how much I was doing.”
The training provided a break too from being with Ruadhán around the clock during maternity leave; a few hours a week “just being myself again”. In week seven, she played half a league match, and it was not long before it was game on as normal.
One year into motherhood, she says, “I definitely feel as good as, if not better than, I ever was.” Her award as player of the match at the all-Ireland club final would suggest she is not wrong about that.
Probably camogie will come to an end eventually, but I’ll stay involved in coaching with my club and I will always go to the gym and exercise classes because it’s more so for my mental health than anything else
McGrath is not going to pretend that she and her sisters, Clodagh (30), Orlaith (29), Siobhán (24), Ciara (18) and Laoise (17) are not all mad competitive, “but as we’ve grown older, that’s kind of lessened a good bit. We’re all very different personalities. I would probably be described as the most competitive to be honest. I think I get it from my parents. They are not exactly laid back.”
Competitiveness in children’s sports is a contentious issue and off-putting for some, although she believes this is being addressed. In her club, for example, they have two under-13 teams. While the first team would be the better players, the second team are not just subs, they get to play matches. “It’s great – like that was not available when I was growing up. You would have lost girls as a result.”
She says she would have hated it if she had not been playing all the time. “I’d be competitive but not quite as bad as I was – bad or good, whatever way you want to interpret it,” she says with a laugh. “There are bigger things going on in life, it’s all relative. When you have a baby, it’s about being able to enjoy yourself.”
Despite the high level of family involvement in camogie, “we don’t actually talk about it that much at home. There’s a time and a place and those boundaries are well established”.
Their father would never discuss teams with them and “if anything, he treats us a lot tougher than other girls. If you get praise from him, it’s well earned”.
Four of the sisters started the final against Co Clare club Truagh Clonlara and the younger two came on as subs. “It was nice the way it happened, but it wasn’t planned or anything like that. It was just kind of circumstance” – and quite typical of the GAA in rural Ireland.
“It’s all brothers, sisters and cousins. It’s really special,” says McGrath, who plans to keep involved in sport for decades to come. “Probably camogie will come to an end eventually, but I’ll stay involved in coaching with my club and I will always go to the gym and exercise classes because it’s more so for my mental health than anything else.”
However, she concedes that with Ruadhán and being back at work, she has to surmount a new level of tiredness to go training in the evenings. She also acknowledges that none of this would be possible without support of family. She and Mike, also a solicitor, were living in Dublin until the pandemic. They have since bought a house just 10 minutes away from her family home in Bullaun, near Loughrea.
The couple both have hybrid work arrangements and usually go to their Dublin offices two days a week, but on different days so one of them can take Ruadhán to and from the childminder. McGrath would normally get the 6.30am train from Ballinasloe - “you can work on the train” - which brings her into Heuston, from where she takes the Luas to Mercer’s offices on Charlemont Street in Dublin 2. It’s a long day as she would not get back home until 8.30pm or 9pm.
Training for the new season resumed a week ago with, typically, two weekly sessions in the gym, collective hurling sessions on Wednesdays and Fridays and then something at the weekend, “be that hurling or running or whatever they decide”.
McGrath still gets nervous before matches, “but not as bad as I used to be in terms of overthinking”. She appreciates still having the chance to participate in the big occasions.
“I was actually not nervous at all for the final because I just wanted to go out and play and win because you don’t really get many of these opportunities. Usually, I’d be making myself all nervous, but whatever way my brain functioning on that day, I was just, ‘I’ll give it everything’ – and where would you rather be, to be honest.”
