A FEW DAYS after powering St Vincent’s to AIB Leinster club camogie glory in 2019, Aisling Maher was told her playing days could be over.
A horror fall from her bike barely 72 hours after the club’s provincial final replay win over St Martin’s left the Dublin forward with serious injuries and a grim warning.
At just 24, and with a series of complicated leg fractures, as well as a dislocated ankle, the medical advice was that she should consider packing in camogie.
It’s almost exactly four years on from that episode now and while Maher still has a leg full of corrective metal plates and screws, she’s thriving on the pitch.
She captured another AIB Leinster club title last year and on Sunday will try to help St Vincent’s retain it by beating Dicksboro in the 2023 provincial decider in Carlow.
That would be a historic win but the day will be novel regardless of the result as both Maher and Dicksboro’s Aoife Prendergast will be fitted with special cameras to record the action from a player’s perspective.
It will be a world first in competitive women’s sport and not something Maher would have ever anticipated being involved in. Truth be told, just taking part in these sorts of occasions is an achievement for her given those injuries she suffered and the subsequent medical advice.
“I was just cycling home, took a corner and there were wet leaves on the road, it was a December evening and my bike just went from under me,” recalled Maher.
“I had a double break in my fibula, broke my tibia, dislocated the ankle as well. It was fairly evident straight away. I sat up and the leg was going like this, one way, and under the knee was at a right angle to it.”
Surgery followed pretty quickly afterwards in Beaumont Hospital, then the doctor’s advice about withdrawing from sport.
“You never like to hear it, definitely not when it’s coming from someone in that position who knows what they’re talking about,” she said.
“I knew enough about my own mindset, and my own stubbornness, that I just wasn’t ready to part with playing sport and to stop playing at that stage so I guess I didn’t really let it get into me or believe it too much. If anything, I probably just used it more as motivation that it absolutely wasn’t going to be the case.”
- Player Cam -
She’d seen other cases of players playing on despite similar medical advice and took her chances. It turned out to be the correct decision for Maher who has developed into one of the top inter-county forwards. If St Vincent’s are to retain their title on Sunday, she will almost certainly have a big say.
Which is probably why she was chosen as one of the players to wear the bodycam as part of AIB’s new Meet #TheToughest series.
Maher is excited by the prospect of taking part and confident that it won’t have any impact on how she plays.
“It doesn’t impede you at all, you wouldn’t even notice it on you,” she said of the tiny camera which will record the action through a hole in the front of her jersey.
And whilst the unique perspective will help to draw supporters and armchair viewers even closer to the action, it could also be used afterwards for coaching and analysis purposes.
“I don’t see any drawbacks with it at all,” said Maher. “It’ll give a whole other insight into skill and execution and physicality that we don’t normally get to capture.
“I think it will be really interesting and I think it’s brilliant that it is camogie that it’s going to be launched with for the first time.”
