IT’S FAIR TO say that the Covid-19 pandemic turned the world upside down.
Like everywhere across the globe, peoples’ lives have dramatically changed — or worse — on these shores over the past 14 months or so, everyone left yearning for some semblance of normality.
Grace O’Flanagan has had a pretty hectic time, working on the frontline as a doctor and playing at the heart of the back line for the Irish women’s hockey team, as goalkeeper.
Juggling professional and playing careers has been challenging for the Dubliner, who is also a cancer survivor, having gone through an extremely difficult period in 2015.
There’s no two ways about it, O’Flanagan is a really impressive person, player and professional.
She casts her mind back to the early months of 2020, when the world began to change forever.
“I was working in a busy Dublin hospital when the pandemic kind of broke,” she told The42 earlier this week, marking Pieta’s Darkness Into Light fundraising drive.
“Fear was definitely the first feeling. We were seeing what was happening in Italy and knowing the strain that our health service was already under, it was hard to imagine what it was going to be like.
“We took it one day at a time. Yes, there were there were definitely times when it was pretty overwhelming in the hospital. I wasn’t working directly in Covid wards or in ICU, I was working on surgery at the time. But still, a lot of patients were coming in with Covid, or were getting Covid in hospital.
“It was definitely a worrying time and you’re having difficult conversations with patients around the level of care that that you can go to and things like that because the service was under so much strain.”
“Thankfully, things are easing now,” she smiles. “It’s really positive with all the vaccinations rolling out, we are kind of seeing light at the end of the tunnel.
“Hopefully things will go a bit more back to normality. But it was something that we’d never experienced before — or I hadn’t anyway in my career. It was definitely a challenging time, but the feeling of people coming together was important, and kind of got us all through that.”
It was a challenging time in every aspect, that’s for sure.
Like sport across the world in line with the various shutdowns, hockey took a back seat for a period. Well, in a team capacity anyway. Individual training continued, though the day job remained the O’Flanagan’s focus.
As hockey restarted and the Green Army reconvened, it was certainly tough to balance.
Catching up on annual leave, the 32-year-old would use her days off work for training; working and training back-to-back, which was difficult. The priority currently lies with one, as a massive summer approaches for Sean Dancer’s side.
“Over the last couple of months, I’ve been solely just training because of the schedule ramping up, especially with international travel. With the quarantine required, it just didn’t leave enough time, it was kind of one or the other.
“Also being aware of the risks of going between the team environment, travelling, and hospital. The last thing you want to do is to put people at risk.
“I felt the best way to reduce my contacts and my bubble was to choose one or the other. So I’ve been all in on hockey for the last couple of months… but I am looking forward to getting back to work soon.”
Hockey in general, what has that been like?
From last summer’s Olympics postponement to everything that’s happened since, how has it all been?
“A bit of a rollercoaster, like almost everything over the past year,” O’Flanagan concedes.
“Gearing up for what’s going to be the biggest thing in your sporting career, being the Olympics last year, to then it being cancelled or postponed, not knowing what’s coming next just leaves a lot of uncertainty.
“For so many of us, you put so many years into something and to feel like it’s all gone to nothing is a horrible feeling. To not know what’s next is a horrible feeling. So leaning on each other has been huge, just talking it through and pulling together through that experience.
“Thankfully, as things progressed, we were able to get back training together and we’ve been so fortunate that we can do that. We realise how lucky we are because so many people haven’t had that over the last while. It’s definitely been full of its ups and downs.
“Overall, we’ve been very fortunate in that we’ve had each other and that we’ve had sport through this time. It does still throw up a lot of uncertainty over the next while but at the moment, things are positive. The information is the Olympics is happening. We have our heads down, we’re training, and we’re ready to go. Things are definitely looking up and looking brighter. It’s good to sort of feel that community as well.”
All going to plan, this team have a lot to target over the coming weeks and months.
June’s European Championships come as the perfect test ahead of July’s Games — and also acts as a World Cup qualifier for next year.
Summers don’t come much bigger than this one.
“It’s brilliant,” O’Flanagan nods. “It’ll hopefully be a big boost as well for everybody, for the supporters. I mean we’ve seen already with sports coming back just what a lift that gives people to watch, people to talk about, and something for everybody to kind of join together and get behind. That’s really exciting.
“I think the Europeans coming up first is going to be a great first competition. We’re fighting for a place in the World Cup for next year so there’s a lot on the line, and it’s a lot to work towards.
“But you know, the last World Cup we just felt the support of the whole nation behind us. Hopefully we’ll be rallying together again now coming into this summer of a lot of good sport. I think it’s really positive and it’s something that we can all really look forward to, in the next few months. It will be great.”
With that support comes added pressure and expectation. There have been a lot of eyes on this team since their magical summer in London in 2018, when they shocked everyone but themselves by reaching the World Cup final.
That silver medal has plenty of weight, O’Flanagan agrees, but her side take it all in their stride. They’re focused on the job at hand, and back themselves each and every step of the way to do something special.
“Yes, there is pressure because we’ve meddled at the World Cup,” she concludes, off the back of disappointing recent results against England following on from a positive start to the year.
“Before, we were always the underdogs, but I think what we’re going to see this summer is at the Olympics especially, it’s going to be very unpredictable.
“With the year that everybody’s had, teams haven’t been playing each other, we don’t know where teams are at, teams haven’t been able to prepare in the environment, that heat and that humidity that we’d normally be out preparing in because of the pandemic.
“There’s going to be a lot of variables there, that’s going to make the Olympics very unpredictable. But we thrive in that. It’s going to be a different Olympics, but it’s our first Olympics, we won’t know any different.
“We’re looking forward to getting out there and showing what we can do. We’ve put in so much work over the last year, and I think we’re really going to see the gains as the summer comes in. It’s an exciting time, and we’re really looking forward to that.”
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