Trials for the very first Women’s U20’s Rugby team in Ireland are being held on Sunday December 13th at Rugby Academy Ireland. The City’s Ciaron Noble spoke with the co-founder of Rugby Academy Ireland Dan Van Zyl and the Head-Coach of the team and former Ireland international Fiona Hayes about this project.
Tag: sportswomen
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Soccer Sisters launch virtual coaching for aspiring women’s soccer players
Gavin Dalton speaks with FAI women’s administrator Rachel Graham about the recent, first of it’s kind virtual Soccer Sisters hub for the October Mid-term break.
With Covid-19 preventing the usual week long camp style delivery of the popular Soccer Sisters programme, Aviva along with the FAI improvised to continue the coaching via a virtual delivery for participating girls to practice and hone their skills from the comfort of their own back garden. With video tutorials from Irish soccer stars Jessica Ziu and Isabeal Atkinson, the Soccer Sisters provided new skills and techniques for each day of the week for aspiring young women’s soccer players to replicate at home. Gavin Dalton spoke with one of the event’s organisers Shelbourne and the Republic of Ireland’s Rachel Graham about how the week went.
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Mary Hickey strives for 41st ‘Virtual’ Dublin Marathon
Dublin marathon legend Mary Hickey has a very impressive record to look back on as she heads into her 41st marathon on Saturday, which is now virtual. With the new Level 5 restrictions, that might mean running “zig-zags around my garden,” she tells TheCity.ie‘s Ciaron Noble.
Mary Hickey from Co. Wicklow. Picture courtesy of Mary Hickey. Mary Hickey (68) from Arklow in Co. Wicklow has competed in every Dublin Marathon since its inception in 1980, being the only woman to have run in every single staging of the event. Although the 41st year of the race won’t be like any of the previous forty races, participants from across the globe will run the race virtually, tracking their progress on an app.
The 26.2 mile challenge will be done in different settings by everyone. Current restrictions state you cannot travel further than 5km from your home, this will greatly limit how far people can travel while doing the challenge.
“I’ll start at 7am on Saturday morning and just keep going until I have the 26.2 miles done, even if it’s a case of just doing a zig-zag around my garden, I’ll get it done, it might be a bit boring and repetitive but sure look it is what it is,” said Hickey.
Despite the remarkable times we find ourselves in, it comes as no surprise to most that the Wicklow runner won’t let the pandemic stop her from moving forward and taking part in the event. She has to take part in the race this year to maintain her record as the only female to compete in every Dublin Marathon. She has also had to power through other physical and mental obstacles over this 40-year period.
In 1989, she was six and a half months pregnant but that didn’t stop her competing in the race. “In those days it was almost taboo for women to exercise while pregnant, never mind doing a marathon. However, as long as you are fit and healthy and know your own body, you’ll be ok” she said. She had to take her time and make plenty of toilet stops along the way that year.
She admitted that this year’s marathon will be a really challenging task as some illness and staggered training has prevented her from being as physically prepared as she would usually be.
“I know it’s going to be a struggle and it will be very slow but I don’t care about times anymore like I did in my younger days, I just want to get it finished, that is the most important thing for me”, said Hickey.
The Marathon veteran has done a few virtual events since the pandemic raising much needed money for some worthy causes. She will be doing the event on Saturday to raise money for the Arklow RNLI. She has also convinced four other local friends to do the race, with one more friend doing the half marathon, a ‘strong lady’ who has faced three different types of cancer. “She’s some survivor”, said Hickey.
The runner touched on the effect the pandemic has had on people’s mental health, understanding that many people will be at the end of their tether. Hickey pleads with people to just ‘dig deep’ as we all hope for better times ahead.
It hasn’t been the easiest road for the runner through injuries and personal grief as she has lost family members over the years, including one of her sons in a tragic incident. “I wonder sometimes how I ever got to the starting line as all these things were happening, but we have to keep going, nothing in life is easy,” she reflected.
She is a big believer that physical activity is the best medication a doctor can recommend to anyone, urging people to stay motivated and try to look after your physical health as well as your mental health.
In 2019 Hickey reached the milestone of her 40th consecutive Dublin Marathon, keeping up her record as the only female to achieve this feat. But the question is, how long can she keep going?
“To be honest, I don’t know if I’ll do many more, the body is already telling me I need to slow down and take it easy, but as long as the mind is willing and I believe I can do it, we’ll see how it goes.”
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Watch: Evolution of women’s sports in Ireland
From rugby, to hockey, and especially the Gaelic Games, we have always been a country that has prided ourselves on our strong sporting tradition. But sport in Ireland has always been predominately male dominated. 3rd year TUD student journalists examine the evolution of women’s sports for TheCity.ie.
It has taken us quite a while to warm to the fact that our women can become the great athletes they have become. However, as time has passed and more waves have been made, we have discovered that our female athletes are just as brilliant as the men- a thriving rugby scene in which the women rival the men, a successful hockey team that have qualified for the Olympic games and a series of determined and hard working women behind all of Irish women’s sports success.
We have looked into why this could be the case, what movements such as 20×20 movement have done for women’s sports, in the eyes of the athletes themselves and what this means for Irish women’s sports in the future.
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Lydia Des Dolles takes a swing at combat sport stereotypes
By Aoife Kearns
In June 2019, Ireland welcomed home one of the most decorated athletes of this generation, newly crowned lightweight undisputed champion of the world – Katie Taylor. Last weekend, Taylor added to her WBA, WBS, IBF and WBO world titles to date, by becoming WBO light-welterweight Champion in Manchester.
Since Taylor’s rise to prominence, public interest in combat sports or ‘fight sports’ such as boxing has risen dramatically. Be it boxing, MMA or martial arts, not only have the public engaged with coverage that the likes of Taylor or Conor McGregor have received on the international stage, more and more people are taking up these sports, hugely expanding the sports’ status on the island of Ireland.
Lydia Des Dolles was one of the many people who took up a combat sport four years ago, in the wake of Taylor’s rise to notoriety. After a ten-year career in the music industry, she wanted to try something different but never anticipated it would lead to a platform with an audience of 45,000 people per month and videos with over 1.2 million views.
Winning the ‘Rising Star in New Media’ award at 2018’s All-Ireland Business Summit, her channel Fight Connect TV, reports on combat sports and documents the journey from amateur to the professional ranks in the sport.
“The stereotypical viewpoint surrounding combat sports is that it’s barbaric or that it’s dangerous and it’s only skinhead guys with tattoos that get inside an octagon, a ring or a cage“
Lydia Des DollesLydia speaks to Conor McGregor after his first UFC loss
Source: FightConnectTV Youtube“I joined a Jiu Jitsu gym which is a ground based, wrestling, grappling martial art. I did that for about a year and a half and I didn’t do anything else, just worked and trained,” said Des Dolles.
“After that I kind of fell into doing social media for an MMA event that was held in the Three arena. It was there that I was exposed to a whole new world that I had no idea existed in Ireland”
From there, Des Dolles started a Snapchat account where she covered events happening in Ireland. As the scene grew dramatically she started to receive requests to cover more and more shows and Fight Connect TV was born.
“The growth in combat sports has been incredible. There’s easily two or three combat sports or martial arts’ events happening per week.”
“The major ones are predominantly in Dublin and the capital gets the bigger events but it is growing nationwide. There’s more and more smaller community-based events happening and they need the support of the public as well.”
“There’s room for MMA, there’s room for martial arts, there’s room for combat sports alongside hurling and football and all these other great sports that are in Ireland at the moment”
Lydia Des DollesDes Dolles has seen people’s attitudes change drastically since she first started out.
“The stereotypical viewpoint surrounding combat sports is that it’s barbaric or that it’s dangerous and it’s only skinhead guys with tattoos that get inside an octagon, a ring or a cage. But that stereotype is really outdated.”
“You only have to look at the likes of Katie Taylor, the highest-ranking sports star that this country has ever produced and she fights and she’s in combat sports so that alone should spark something in the media and the government to get behind fight sports.”
Taylor’s homecoming in Dublin Airport in June will go down in the history books, but not for all the right reasons. Minister for Sport, Shane Ross, made a now infamous appearance at the arrival gates that resulted in an array of memes, plastered on social media. Thankfully, people didn’t hold back when it came to calling out the Minister for Sport for his farcical photobombing.
Source: @LydiaDesDolles Instagram “Anyone who saw the footage of Katie Taylor coming home from America with all of her belts this summer would have seen the Minister for Sport, Shane Ross, behind her.”
“As funny as they are, the reality is that Minister Ross does not support combat sports.”
“It’s definitely not a niche sport anymore”
Lydia Des Dolles“He has spoken in the past about how he doesn’t think combat sports including boxing and MMA should be regulated as national sports. Hopefully that PR disaster might change his mind.”
Des Dolles truly believes the time has come for these sports to receive the same respect and recognition as some of the other sports that are vastly covered in mainstream Irish media.
Photo Credit: @FightConnectTV “It’s definitely not a niche sport anymore, and from what we’re seeing, the likes of kids that once would have gone to hurling or rugby or football are now starting to take up MMA as well”
“There’s room for MMA, there’s room for martial arts, there’s room for combat sports alongside hurling and football and all these other great sports that are in Ireland at the moment”
Lydia Des Dolles is the creator of Fight Connect TV.
You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram and Twitter @FightConnectTV.
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Women in Sport: Lyndsey Davey, Dublin GAA
Picture credit: Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE The City’s Alison O’ Hanlon talked to Dublin Ladies GAA All Star Lyndsey Davey about the commitment of playing for your county and her hopes for the future.
It’s been a year of highs and lows for Dublin vice captain Lyndsey Davey whose side were beaten by Cork in a one point defeat in this years All Ireland Final.
Davey also received an All Star award, along with three of her team-mates, for her performances throughout this year’s championship.
“It was a great honour to have been even nominated and I was very shocked to have won as I was up against some brilliant players. It was a great achievement for Dublin to get 11 nominations and I feel privileged to be one of the four Dublin players to have won an All-Star”, Davey told The City.
But success like this doesn’t come easy or without commitment. Davey started playing Gaelic at 5 years old for Skerries Harps and progressed on to play with the boys teams until under 14 when a girls team was set up in the club.
Davey spoke of how much of a commitment GAA players have to give to play county football, but insists that the success is a just reward for the sacrifices she has to make,
“Players have to give massive commitment when playing county football. The standard of Ladies Gaelic is increasing every year and girls are training like professional athletes while still holding down a full time job or education. Even in terms of nutrition players have to be very disciplined.
“At times it can be difficult as you can’t be going out at the weekends with your friends when you have training or are playing matches. However, when you get the opportunity to represent your county, especially in an All-Ireland final, it’s an easy sacrifice to make.”
Given that most GAA players train as much and as hard as many professional athletes, the 25 year old said given the opportunity she would love to play Gaelic football at a professional level, but it’s the love of the game that keeps her going, “I suppose if the option was there then I would but it’s not really something I think about. I play Gaelic because I enjoy it and I love playing for Dublin.”
“Even if there was a chance to play Gaelic for Ireland I would be interested. There was a female International Rules game a few years ago but unfortunately I was unable to play. If the opportunity was to arise again then I would love to play.”
Davey also commented on the highly topical area of media coverage that female athletes receive and the coverage gap that seems to be closing in Ireland in the last few years.
“I think over time that gap is starting to close and female sports are getting increased media coverage. This is helped by the success of Katie Taylor and the ladies Irish rugby team and I think Stephanie Roche being short listed for goal of the year is a massive boost to Irish female athletes. It was brilliant when AIG announced their sponsorship of all Dublin teams, including the ladies, as this has gone a long way in helping to close that gap and I hope other sponsors start to do the same.”
Although Davey’s September didn’t have quite the ending she hoped for she was honoured when her fellow team-mates picked her as their Player of the Year.
“I think to win any individual award is always a nice achievement but the players player is definitely a special one to me, as it was my team mates who voted for me. So many Dublin players had a great season this year and I think that was proven when we received 11 All-Star nominations so to have been picked as the players player of the year was a massive honour for me.”
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