It is unlikely that anything surprises anyone who knows Lindsay Peat anymore. This is a story about a rugby player but really it’s about a Dublin footballer, an Irish basketball captain and an underage soccer international. Peat is all of these, rolled into one remarkable sporting life.
Amid the rhetoric about equality in sport we hear little about this Artane woman. That she is not a household name countrywide is an indictment of the lack of genuine gender balance in Irish sport.
Not that Peat cares. She is well known among her peers. Some would say feared. She learned that on joining the Irish women’s basketball team in 2006. Her new team-mates, all former rivals, were hesitant at first, expecting the same persona that had bashed into them on the court.
"I remember, when the ice broke, we were laughing – they said, 'We hated you,'" she told Stellar magazine in an interview last March. "When they get to know me off the pitch, that's when they see the real me. That's not a personal thing. You have the ball, I want the ball, I'm taking the ball."
Peat’s football and basketball careers came to a natural conclusion without injury ever slowing her stride. Instead, life intervened. Her wife Claire is due their first child in February, so Peat, a qualified PE teacher, is double-jobbing between clerical work in the HSE and as a basketball coach at Sandford Park school in Ranelagh.
So she retired from competitive sport. She was done. Content with her lot.
But rugby, the physicality of it, has always intrigued her (the uncles used to play American football too). She dipped her toe in with Railway Union just as Ireland coaches Anthony Eddy and Tom Tierney were scouring the club scene in search of fresh talent for both sevens and 15-aside.
“When the call came we had decided to move on, but Claire said people would give their right arm to play in an Ireland jersey and that I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. So we said I’d give it a crack. I was honest with Tom on that front and it didn’t faze him at all. Family life has to be the priority but we will deal with that if and when it comes. People have said wouldn’t it be great, please God, to be able to tell our baby that mammy played for Ireland. It’s a short-term commitment in life that will be a long term memory. That’s why I’m doing it.”
Qualification for the 2016 Rio Olympics remains a possibility while the World Cup will be hosted between UCD and Belfast in 2017. With several of Ireland’s fastest players currently focusing on sevens, Tierney is seeking to defend the Six Nations and build sustainable squad depth.
Fast-tracked
A string of injuries saw Peat fast-tracked into his squad, where she made her debut off the bench during last Saturday’s 8-3 defeat to England at The Stoop. That saw her join an elite group of All-Ireland winners and rugby internationals. Not since Mick Galwey has that feat been achieved. By a man.
The crossover between Gaelic games, athletics and women’s rugby remains fluid and positive. Current Ireland captain Niamh Briggs was once a Waterford footballer.
“It was a bit of a surprise,” said Peat of her call up only eight days before she was capped. “We had a couple of injuries so I got the nod. I just thought I’d get called back into camp in December, if I was lucky.”
Luck had a little to do with it but really it’s the way she plays that prompted Tierney to blood her now. She begun as a backrow but the future will probably be at prop.
“I was happy enough,” she said of the 13-minute cameo. “Got a few hits. I thought at one stage I had found the gap but all of a sudden one of the legs was gone from underneath me.”
Basketballer
A back story is needed. Peat is a basketballer. She co-captained, with Michelle Fahy, the now defunct Irish women’s side to victory over Holland in 2010. That same year she won her All-Ireland medal. Peat’s last game for Dublin was last year’s harrowing defeat in the All-Ireland final when the great Cork team rubbed out her two goals when reeling in a 10-point lead.
That experience would stay with any sportswoman.
“I feel very privileged. It would have been nice to walk away with another All-Ireland but I walked away with the memory of knowing I did all I could in an All-Ireland final. I was part of a fabulous team that will win an All-Ireland in the future. Once we overturn that Cork hoodoo a blue wave will take over.”
Basketball was a constant throughout her teens as she only took up football in her twenties. This switch was helped by her soccer background, having played for Ireland at under-19 level in 1998.
“In basketball, I committed so much but never really got a shot at underage. When I got capped in 2006 I started to put an awful lot of time into to make sure I didn’t lose what I had earned. The same with Dublin. In 2010, I juggled both sports – that was probably the toughest year, but when I say it was hard work it wasn’t really. It was something I loved doing. If you don’t like doing something you will never really put in the work. And I reaped a lot of rewards.”
When it all ended that innate competitive spirit dragged her across town to Railway Union, a serious reputation following in her slipstream. “It’s funny I always joked that I should take up rugby to use my size in a more productive way than Gaelic football. I probably got away with a lot more in basketball. It’s supposed to be non-contact but it’s not – posting up or going for screens, blocking people off. There are plenty of . . . legal ways you can do it. Doing strength and conditioning with Dublin I was physically stronger than some of my opposing numbers. I didn’t really feel it was fully utilised. Now I can use that more to my advantage.
“Rugby is very technical, which I like as it mirrors basketball, but the breakdown is still my biggest problem in that I may be competing for rucks that are already lost. “They are all, eventually, attacking games. And I always like to go forward as soon as I get the ball.”
The World Cup is a long way away for a 35-year-old but her natural strength and attitude makes it a possibility. “I’ll see how it pans out. This has all been a whirlwind. Really I was just trying to fill the void after football and basketball. I’m like a child – I’d play all three if I could . . .”
But she’s currently where she belongs.
“Yeah, 6am this morning we were in the gym. We will go at it three times this week and then back into camp in December and January. Even now at this stage you know the schedule, you know what’s expected of you. As much as we are defending Six Nations champions, in the corner of our eye we know there is a World Cup at home in 2017 which we want to win.”
