Kim Flood is no stranger to elite sport. The 26-year-old Dubliner has already played in FAI Cup and senior All-Ireland football finals and she didn’t lick her multiple talents and ultra-competitive spirit off the stones.
The family had a ping-pong table on their back deck for many years and the in-house tournaments, apparently, used to get a little feisty: “Even my mother is unreal, putting back-spin on it and everything.”
Her parents both rowed locally in Ringsend where she grew up and she is the third of their six sporty children.
All four girls won Dublin championship medals together with local GAA club Clanna Gael Fontenoy and she has regularly juggled Gaelic football and soccer.
But never in a million years did she dream that herself and her sister Stacey (19) would be chasing an Olympic spot next month with the Irish rugby Sevens team.
Flood’s first appearance in Croke Park was as a half-time Cumann na mBunscol munchkin at the 2002 men’s All-Ireland final where, much to her disgust, she was given a Kerry kit to wear.
Her last was in true blue, coming off the Dublin women’s bench at half-time in last year’s All-Ireland senior football final.
Now she is exclusively wearing green.
She made her Six Nations debut at full-back against Italy this year and has become a regular starter in the HSBC World Sevens Series, whose final leg takes Ireland to France (Clermont) on May 28th-29th.
“With the Sevens I play hooker and Stacey plays scrum-half so, basically, she’s feeding me the ball in the scrums and I have to give it back to her,” she laughs.
Flood had a little more rugby experience than some of the other high-profile GAA players who have made the jump to the oval ball, though still not a lot.
A few years ago, at a loose end after Dublin lost to Cork in the All-Ireland semi-finals, she heard Railway Union was starting a women’s rugby team.
Fizzled out
She rocked up initially for fitness reasons but loved it and, within months, found herself fast-tracked into the Leinster squad where Fiona Coghlan and Ailis Egan took her under their wings.
She was also quickly called into the newly emerging Irish Sevens squad but “they used to train at weekends in Johnstown House, I was in college in Sligo and had a lot of other commitments so, while I really enjoyed it, I fizzled out of it”.
Soccer actually held first sway for her Ringsend family who moved Rathmines in her early teens.
“I played with Cambridge Boys growing up, the only girl, played ‘right full’, hardy out!” she says proudly. “I used to get changed in the referee’s room on my own and they’d call me into the dressing room when it was OK.”
But with no girls’ soccer locally she successfully went down the Gaelic route and, after two years working in insurance, took up a GAA scholarship at Sligo IT to study business and sport.
Several of her new college-mates were combining inter-county and soccer for Castlebar Celtic and persuaded her to join them.
They reached the 2013 FAI Cup final, the first to be played with the men’s at HQ, but memorable for her for another reason.
“Oh stop! I scored an OG, in the first half of extra-time, to win it for Raheny,” she groans.
“The only Dub on the country team wins it for the Dublin team – that was a bit ironic.
“The girls reckoned Raheny paid me! Still they forgave me. I went back on the bus to Castlebar with them anyway. I was absolutely heartbroken though it was a brilliant experience to play in the Aviva.”
Gaelic remained her primary passion, even though an All-Ireland medal (apart from a Senior B) has somehow managed to elude her.
She was on the Dublin team pipped in the 2009 senior final but missing, through injury, a year later when the Jackies won it for the only time.
“Nearly every year I played we were beaten by Cork, and then, the following year’s team would win,” she muses without rancour.
Last winter, with the Olympics a major carrot, Flood made the decision to commit to rugby and combines it with her nine-to-five job with New Ireland Assurance. “We are all doing different things, from teachers and doctors to students but, anyone who can, comes in at lunch to do their gym, some speed work and skills before the main pitch session.
“I do my gym at 6am, go to work and then make the main pitch session,” she explains.
Lucky
“Our Sevens home is 62 Lansdowne Road, everything we do is based around it. We train in Lansdowne and use the gym in the Aviva too.
“It’s very physically demanding but I enjoy being busy,” she insists. “And I’m lucky. If I have to leave work early for training or am abroad for competitions my employers are very supportive.”
Flood’s natural athleticism and talent has hastened her adaption to rugby but such a high achiever is still often frustrated.
“I knew if I really wanted to succeed in rugby I’d have to give up Gaelic football. That was really hard at the start because I didn’t know if I was any good at rugby.
“Fielding a high ball, catching, running, passing and finding space – that all comes from soccer and Gaelic. But I’m still working hard on the skills, particularly passing. Sometimes you think, ‘why can’t I just take to it as easily as Gaelic?’
“There’s a lot of rules in rugby, I’m still like ‘what’s that for?’ at times,” she confesses, and some of her natural instincts must be curbed.
“I love a good kick pass in Gaelic football, an aul’ outside-of-the-boot, over-the-bar job! Just to stop yourself from doing that is hard,” she admits, laughing.
“Sevens is really fast too. Blink and someone’s scored three tries past you!”
Yet she loves it – “so much skill and speed and games that change in the blink of eye” – and is playing a key role for Ireland whose Olympic dream depends on winning the repechage tournament in UCD on June 24th-25th.
Competing in the premier division of the World Series has already tested but improved Anthony Eddy’s side.
They won the ‘bowl’ to finish ninth (of 12 nations) in Atlanta last month and were just pipped, by a late Brazilian try, for a place in the bowl final in Canada a week later.
Rivals
Atlanta, significantly, included a victory over Spain who, along with Russia, are expected to be their toughest rivals for that one Olympic spot.
“This was our first year back in the top level, with a completely new team and I think it’s starting to click now,” Flood says.
“After Clermont we have the Euros in Russia in early June and then the qualifying tournament in UCD. There’s a massive opportunity there for us to get to the Olympics.”
It would surpass all of her many previous sporting highs, especially with little sis there too.
“I know, we’re trying to outdo the Kearneys! We need to take them on in some sort of challenge now: ‘The Floods versus The Kearneys!’” she hoots and you get the feeling she’s only half-joking.
