KILKENNY CAMOGIE’S ANNE Dalton was able to be alone with her son Tadhg for about an hour when he was born.
Her partner Karen Kelly was resting after giving birth and Dalton was brought to an empty room on her own where she could hold her child for the first time.
It’s always a new experience for first-time parents to meet their children, but this was different for Dalton. It was her first time to hold a baby in years.
Even then, the odd bit of babysitting during her teens was about all she had to call upon.
She never thought of herself as being great with kids but there was never any need to worry about Tadhg’s impending arrival. Both she and Karen had waited some two years for him to come along and Dalton quickly discovered that she was perfectly well equipped for this.
Any doubts she had about herself disappeared instantly when she held him in her arms.
The bond was immediate.
“I was terrified,” she tells The42.
“What ended up happening was Karen was put under so he was taken in for checks and he was given to me for about 30-60 minutes on my own in a room to hold him.
“It was the first time I ever held a baby probably younger than six months and I was terrified but it was amazing at the same time. And the nurses and midwives at St Luke’s [hospital] were absolutely lovely and very supportive.
Tadhg went into see Karen when she came round about 60 minutes later and I suppose it was a bit emotional because we had been waiting for it for a bit of time and it finally came about which was a bit emotional.
“I probably wouldn’t have considered myself a children’s person but I feel now when you have your own, it completely changes things. You’d do anything for them and they come first.
I don’t think I had anything to worry about, if anything I probably need to rein in it a little bit.”
Karen became pregnant with Tadhg last November and the pair told their families about the brilliant news over the Christmas period.
It’s normal for couples to hold off before telling loved ones about a pregnancy but Anne and Karen’s situation was more complicated than that.
When they decided that they were going to start a family, they opted for a sperm donor through the assistance of the Beacon Hospital in Dublin.
They went for a consultation, followed the instructions and went to the sperm bank where they looked through the profiles on offer to pick a suitable candidate.
Every pregnancy brings its own set of challenges but Anne and Karen — who is a teacher — were already facing certain processes that many other couples don’t encounter when trying for a baby.
“We were probably a bit naive going into it thinking, ‘We want to go now so let’s go next month.’ First of all you’re going to a clinic in Dublin so up and down the road before work would have have been a bit stressful.
The two of us probably should have been put off the road last year,” she laughs.
“As well as that, just because you want your body to do something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to do it.
“If you’re taking medications and doctors don’t know how your body’s going to react to certain medications so there’s a certain element of a trial period where you’re trying to get to a stage where they say, ‘We’re good to go now.’
“When you’re going through, you want to be as stress-free as possible so when Karen was coming out of school in the summer, that was the best chance for her.
“While you think you can go after every month, it just doesn’t work out that way, especially with work commitments and that. It’s two years since we started but we got there in the end.
It is a stressful process and you wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But it’s definitely worth it in the end. When he came out healthy, all that previous stress just went out the window. You don’t even think about it really.”
Both Karen and Tadhg thankfully came through the birth with a full bill of health. He has his whole life ahead of him now and Dalton is already thinking about the good times he’ll have growing up with the cousins who are all around his age.
But bringing him into the world wasn’t an easy process, and the sperm donor birth plan was a lonely path in some respects for Anne and Karen.
“I don’t know anyone that has gone through it myself that I can think of,” says Dalton. “I think it’s something that probably happens more than we think.
It’s pretty obvious that we have to go through it because we’re two girls but for a heterosexual couple, it probably happens more than we think. People probably just aren’t open to talking about it.
“There was an element of us wanting to keep it to ourselves as well because we wanted to be sensible without getting messages asking, ‘Well, did it work this month?’ So there was an element of wanting to keep it in-house and deal with it ourselves.”
While home life is thriving for Dalton, her sporting life has been a bit more difficult of late. Her 2018 season ended in disappointment following Kilkenny’s second consecutive defeat to Cork in an All-Ireland final.
Just as it was in the 2017 decider, there was one point between the sides in the end with Orla Cotter nailing the decisive free out near the sideline.
Dalton collected the Camogie Association/WGPA Senior Players’ Player of the Year award as well as a sixth All-Star at the end of the year, but the sting of losing out on the ultimate prize still lingers.
“It was another devastating year for us,” she says, “lost by the smallest of margins and sometimes you’re having debates with people and they might say you’re better off getting hammered.
“Sometimes you think you’re better off losing by a point or two because at least you know then that you’re close to the champions. It hurts either way when you lose.”
In addition to getting that injury-time score, it was Cotter who also won the free after she was adjudged to have been fouled when she was surrounded by Kilkenny defenders.
It was considered to be a controversial decision by referee Eamon Cassidy at the time and Cats boss Ann Downey criticised the call afterwards, saying that she felt Cotter “was falling”.
For Dalton, she’s disappointed that so much of the post-match reaction was dominated by the officiating of the game.
“The biggest shame that I thought came out of that All-Ireland was that the only thing that was talked about was how bad the reffing was.
“I think at the moment with camogie, we’re in a very dangerous position whereby the world outside camogie – a lot of people are looking in and saying that it’s not a good sport to watch, it can’t possibly be a good sport to play.
I still have people turning to me asking, ‘Why do you play that sport when that’s what’s going on?’”
“I don’t know why Cork aren’t fuming, and maybe they are fuming. They’re after putting back-to-back All-Irelands together and at the end of the day they’re the 2018 All-Ireland champions. And instead of talking about that, people were speaking about the reffing.
“Whatever about that last free, it was said that the ref may have been afraid to penalise Cork. Only the ref can answer that.
I feel for Cork in one sense because they’re All-Ireland champions and it’s nearly being said that they were given it as opposed to earning it.
“For it to be said that you essentially didn’t deserve it, there has to be some small bit of hurt with that.
“The association has to look at that as well. If the main talking point after an All-Ireland final is the referee, then that’s a problem and that’s going to contribute to the decline of camogie in years to come.”
Dalton’s concerns about the current state of camogie also brings in comparisons with Ladies football, a sport which has enjoyed huge progress in recent years.
All-Ireland final crowds for the big ball game have already surpassed the 50,000 mark while this year’s camogie decider drew a far smaller crowd of 21,467 to Croke Park.
The gap is evident and Dalton wants to see her sport catch up to its GAA equivalent.
Ultimately, she believes that the camogie association needs to look more closely at what ladies football is doing to achieve more success in terms of promotion.
“The fact that Dublin is in a final is going to factor into some of that but I’m not sure it factors into 30,000 more. I’ve never watched ladies football but in the last couple of years, I actually do watch it and I go out of my way to work my day around watching it.
“I don’t do it with the men’s football, but I’ll do it with the ladies football because whatever they’re doing in the promotion of the sport is really good and it’s turned me into a fan.
I think the camogie community need to look at Ladies Gaelic football and see what we can bring out of their structure into our game.
“Sometimes it feels like the camogie community are afraid to make decisions in case it’s the wrong decision so instead, we’re standing still.”
The Kilkenny camogie team is unique in a sense, considering that they have a female manager. She also happens to be a legend of the county.
Ann Downey amassed 12 senior All-Ireland medals in a decorated career for the Cats and she was brought in to take charge of the team in 2016. The Lisdowney clubwoman guided them to All-Ireland success that year, ending a 22-year wait for the O’Duffy Cup in the process.
And she has recently been appointed for a fourth year as the Kilkenny boss.
Her sister Angela and former teammate Breda Holmes form part of her backroom team and they bring a wealth of experience to the Kilkenny dressing room.
There are a few exceptions around the country, but female managers are still a rarity at inter-county level.
Dalton suspects that a few factors have contributed to this, such as wanting to start a family and therefore not having the time to pursue management opportunities.
She also points out that the life of a female player involves a lot of fighting for basic requirements including facilities, pitches and funding.
Some grow tired of that constant struggle at the end of their playing career, according to Dalton, and don’t have any energy left to give to management.
Downey is different though. She never gets worn down by the fight.
“She’s a fighter, she will fight to the end for Kilkenny camogie and if she thinks she can bring something to us, she will fight for us,” says Dalton.
“A lot of people might say that they’re tired of fighting and take a break from it.
“Ann is a very determined person in general. She’s an old-fashioned manager in the sense that she’s there solely to promote Kilkenny camogie and there’s no other motive there.
It’s not for media attention, she’s there for Kilkenny camogie to succeed. And when you see someone like that with your team, it motivates you to aim for one thing and that’s to win an All-Ireland.
“Everything else doesn’t matter. Winning an All-Ireland is the only thing and that’s the feeling she brings into a dressing room.
“Her sister Angela is involved with us as well and Breda Holmes. I remember playing Galway in the championship last year and Angela walked into the dressing room and said, ‘God if only I was 20 years younger.’
And you could see it in her that she was rearing to go and if she had a helmet, she’d have gone out and played.
“You feed off that. I remember thinking that I was really lucky to be playing that day knowing that she’d give anything to go out and play. I said I was going to enjoy this and do everything in my control to win this game.
“They have a dogged spirit in them that the players feed off.”
Dalton has watched the All-Ireland final back a few times at this stage.
It’s part of her post-match routine. She looks at every game she plays regardless of the result to learn from her mistakes, take note of the positives and move forward as a player.
It might make for painful viewing but now that the 2018 final is out of the way, she can turn her attention to the 2019 season which is only a few weeks away.
It’s an exciting time for Kilkenny as they welcome two-time All-Ireland winner Brian Dowling into their backroom team as a selector.
Now that Tadhg is in her life, Dalton knows that she will need to balance her time better when pre-season training begins. Everything from her own personal gym sessions to her diet will have to be accounted for, as well as making time to spend with her son.
It’s going to be a challenge to balance everything but she has supportive teammates who have all accepted Tadhg as one of their own.
They keep saying it that they felt like aunties and it’s like a family. So there’s been great support from them and from management.
“I always knew if I had to turn to them and say that I can’t make something, there was never going to be an issue there. That means a lot to get that support from the team and from management.”
He might not be aware of what’s happening, but this is Tadhg’s first Christmas and the house is full of festive cheer for him.
Anne and Karen brought him to see Santa recently and as Dalton puts it, “it’s all about making memories”.
Karen is a former All-Ireland winner with Waterford and the pair met while playing camogie together at WIT. If Tadhg happens to inherit the sporting gene as he grows up, Dalton would be only delighted, but her main wish for him is that he has some passion in life to call his own.
Whatever it is, his Mums will support him in every way they can.
It might not have been easy to bring him into the world, but they’re blessed to have him at the heart of their family.
“Absolutely. Spoilt rotten, he’s the boss.”
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