CORK MIDFIELDER ASHLING Thompson sensed something was off when she saw her foot and leg pointing in opposite directions.
The pitch seemed a bit uneven during the warm-up due to the recent spell of warm weather, and within 10 minutes of the throw-in, she was undone by the hardened surface.
Playing for her club Milford against Na Piarsaigh, Thompson had just gathered the ball. She intended to peel away from a tackle with possession in hand, but she failed to get through the first step. A terrible cracking sound followed as she slumped to the ground. It had all the hallmark signs of one of the most severe injuries in contact sports.
“It’s just unfortunate because it was probably just a patch that I was unlucky to get stuck in,” Thompson tells The42 about the dreadful incident from the first half of her side’s Cork championship opener.
I went to go out with the ball and as I pivoted my foot, my studs got jammed in the ground. I remember looking at my foot thinking, ‘Oh shit.’ I could see that my studs were completely jammed in the ground.
“My foot didn’t pivot with my leg and my leg went in the opposite direction.”
Thompson initially felt like she could play on, but she couldn’t ignore the concerning sound coming from her knee. She woke up later that night to swelling around the affected area, and a scan later confirmed the worst – an ACL tear. It’s every GAA player’s biggest injury fear, as it presents a typical recovery time of nine months. That would rule her out of the rest of Milford’s campaign and a good chunk of Cork’s 2023 season.
This was Thompson’s first camogie game since losing the 2022 All-Ireland final against Kilkenny, and she had big plans for the coming months during the inter-county off-season. Her itinerary included linking up with a top Ladies football club in Cork, who are also the 2018 and 2019 All-Ireland club champions.
“I actually played with Mourneabbey at underage [level] for years,” says Thompson about the proposed venture which would have been an intriguing alliance to see.
They’re obviously at the highest level and that would have really stood to me coming into pre-season but that ended fairly swiftly. 10 minutes of club [camogie] championship and that was it.
“Obviously, it’s lovely to go back to the club but when we wouldn’t be competing at such a high level, we’ve been struggling with camogie for the last few years, so I find it very hard to go from such a high level into club where we’re struggling quite a bit, and then I find pre-season with Cork is quite hard because we were knocked out so early in the club championship.
“Hopefully I’ll recover fairly well and looking at the off-season next year, it’s probably something I will take up again. It depends, sure God only knows where I’m going to be this time next year. It’s so I can be prepared at my age. I need to keep my body in check as much as I possibly can and make life easy. Football is obviously a great way to do that in terms of fitness.
“There’s probably never a good time but I guess with the club at the moment, we are struggling anyway so I think it would have been worse to be out now when we were winning All-Irelands than during the inter-county season. But we’re down in intermediate now with the club and we’re struggling big time as it is.
“I obviously don’t want to be missing out on my club action but it definitely makes it easier compared to back when we were winning All-Irelands.”
Thompson has never suffered an injury of this scale before but is coping well with the setback, and insists she’s not “down in the dumps” about the long recovery ahead. She also has surgery to factor in over the coming weeks.
There’s no defined time window on the length of her layoff, but Thompson is prepared to wait until her knee is sufficiently healed to go back in the pit.
“I want to give myself the best possible chance,” she explains. “I’m not going to come back unless I’m 100% so if that means it takes longer then I’m going to take longer because at my age, I can’t risk taking a chance. It’s just not worth it. Any athlete that goes through an injury as significant as this needs to take time. Nine times out of 10, you end up back at square one or end up injuring the other leg.
“The most important thing is to be patient because a lot of the time, especially with these injuries, athletes are so impatient in terms of recovery and trying to get back as fast as they can. But you could end up doing damage that you end up with further down the line. It might shorten your career because you’ll run into problems with the joint itself. It’s extremely important to take your time with it.
“I know I’m at the latter end of my career but I’m probably at my best at the moment and I still feel like I have more to give, and that gives me a lot of comfort.”
That one-point defeat to Kilkenny marks back-to-back All-Ireland final losses for Cork. They’re also four years on from their last O’Duffy Cup triumph, which is quite a barren stretch by Cork’s standards of excellence. But for the four-time All-Ireland winner, this latest defeat in a final has been the toughest one to stomach.
She’ll be a key absentee for the next while, but provided her healing goes smoothly, Thompson will be right at the coalface of their revenge mission next year.
“It was devastating and it was definitely the hardest loss in my own career in Cork,” says Thompson. “We’ve grown together a lot in the last couple of years and we’ve really built up a good relationship amongst the squad.
“I felt the effort was just outstanding from the squad. When you go into a final, you want to come out with a win but you’re never guaranteed anything in life. It’s probably a game we’d walk away from saying we should have won but I guess Kilkenny have been in the same position as us. We’ve beaten them by that one-point margin two or three times in finals.
“They were tactically very good and Brian Dowling is an excellent manager. They got their tactics spot on, which is probably something I haven’t seen from them in a while.
“It’s not nice being on the other end of it but you have to go through these moments in order to get over the line. Hopefully, that’s sooner rather than later. I think there’s big things in store for this team if we can get our performance and our confidence levels up, and push on from this year. I think we’ll have absolutely no problem. Girls will be even hungrier next year, given how far we’ve come in the last couple of years.
“From our point of view, the goal was probably the difference on the day. We started slowly but we were level at half-time so to me, the slow start was really no excuse. There was a whole second half to play and the goal fell at the right time for them. They probably had the luck on the day but that’s how it goes. We’ve had the luck in the past.”
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