YOU COULD FORGIVE Louise Galvin for being caught slightly off guard yesterday.
Never mind the fact that the recently-retired Ireland Sevens star was doing this interview in during a break at work, Bríd Stack’s was a name Galvin surely didn’t expect to come up within.
While she went about her morning’s work as a primary care physiotherapist in Dublin south-east, massive news broke about 11-time All-Ireland champion Stack.
Having brought the curtain down on her inter-county career in 2019, the Cork legend is opening a new chapter in Australia after signing for AFLW side Greater Western Syndey [GWS] Giants.
Likewise, former Kerry star Galvin closed a major chapter in her own colourful sporting career in Sevens a few weeks back, and has been enjoying a new lease of life since, returning to her Gaelic football and club rugby roots.
The pair went toe-to-toe in many a Munster football battle a few years back, so a few words from Galvin on the breaking news, and this phenomenal athlete continuing her career Down Under would be fitting.
“Sorry now, I’ve been flat out at work,” she begins, puzzled at first before it clicks.
“Is she going to AFL, tell me?! I literally started work at eight and I haven’t looked at my phone until this happened.”
She’s going…
“Ah gowaaaay,” she interjects, a huge smile breaking out across her face.
… to GWS, Cora’s club
“Giants, in Sydney, yeah,” Galvin asks, trying to gather her thoughts. “I actually visited Giants when we were over playing Sevens. I’d have obviously played against Cora and then we did the Sky Sports Living for Sport series together.
“She contacted us when we were over, she’d know Lucy Mulhall as well, the Sevens captain, and a few of us went out to look at the facilities. It was brilliant to see. We took out the old AFL ball for a look, but I didn’t realise…”
Her mind turns back to Stack, who will make the big move at the age of 34 with her husband and one-year-old son.
“Ah with Carthach and the little baby as well,” Galvin smiles down the Zoom call. “I must send her a text. That’s brilliant. Excellent!”
“Sorry, I honestly haven’t looked at my phone,” she excuses herself again, still in shock over the news and delighted for her long-time opponent on the pitch, and friend off it. “I’m very self-absorbed these days!
“Oh my god, that’s brilliant. You know what, no better woman because on and off the field, she’s just an absolute champion and absolute hero so I wish her all the very best. Fair play to her.”
Two of Ireland’s top female athletes taking their careers in new directions over the past few weeks is an interesting one. As is the fact that Galvin spent some time at an Aussie Rules club, albeit just a flying visit.
Staunton, who paved the way for many Irish crosscoders after her when she made the move to the Giants in 2017, collected Galvin and the travelling party at their hotel and brought them along to training with her.
“It was class. Really cool to see. It was a similar set-up to what we have in terms of we’ve male and female Sevens training together out in the high performance centre in Blanch. It was still brilliant to see, obviously it’s very high performance.
“With Giants as well, they have a netball team attached. It’s a franchise essentially, I think it’s netball and then the AFLW and AFL. The men would train in the morning and the women in the late afternoon into the evening.
“Like the Sevens set-up, you’re eating on site, you have your analysis rooms, your gym, your pitch, your recovery suites, your team and kit rooms so it was kind of similar just a slightly different way of doing things but it was just cool to see.
“Here are two ladies footballers who played against each other on the field… now one’s a massively more successful ladies footballer, but to think we’re over on the other side the world, talking about each other’s experiences now as professional athletes in a different guise — both with funny-shaped balls at this stage.”
“It’s just brilliant to see the opportunities that are out there now and to take a step backwards. I always look back to my background in both Gaelic football and basketball and think how they prepared me for what I’m doing, or what I did on a rugby field, and I’m sure Cora would say the same.”
So basically, Cora was trying to twist the arm? Gaelic football, basketball and rugby all played at the highest level, why not try a new sport next?
“I don’t know if she was really,” Galvin laughs. “That was something Donnchadh was pushing: ‘Will we try and head off to Australia?’ I was like, ‘Nah, if we can get back to Kerry at some stage we might do well!’”
Donnchadh is her husband, former Kerry star Donnchadh Walsh. With the big return, there’s surely been no shortage of Gaelic games talked in their house over the past few weeks. Well, whenever they’ve been there together with both commuting from the capital to the Kingdom for matches.
“I know people are like, ‘Ye traipsing up and down the road from Dublin,’” she grins. “But I think he’ll be there playing with Cromane until he’s well into his 40s anyway!”
Since making the decision to call time on her Sevens career — and until Level 3 came into play — Galvin has thoroughly enjoyed a new lease of life while balancing club football and rugby, along with her job as a physio after some ICU work in the height of the Covid-19 crisis.
The pandemic forced her to rethink and she decided to control the controllables in her sporting career amidst this world of uncertainty: continue working, take a step back from Sevens and return to amateur sport, which was, admittedly, in the back of her mind.
“It’s not that I’m happy to do it, but I’m happy that it’s the right time, if that makes sense,” she concedes, content with her decision.
Under Friday Night Lights, Galvin enjoyed a glittering return to the UL Bohemians set-up, helping them to an opening-round Women’s Energia Community Series victory last weekend, before lining out for her beloved Finuge/St Senan’s in the Munster intermediate ladies football championship semi-final on Saturday.
While her county title winning campaign with Finuge came to an end in the provincial last-four battle, it was a run she enjoyed like no other.
“Ah, it was brilliant. Like it was phenomenal. I was like a newborn calf bucking around the place! Leaving and going to Sevens, it’s difficult to give up a career and a job but it was very difficult to walk away from the sports I had already played and the teams I was part of because, just like leaving Sevens now, it’s almost like a family.
“I was just so proud of my club because look, for five years, I haven’t been there. I haven’t done a tap, I’ve been living in Dublin, I haven’t done a training session because we literally haven’t been allowed and to see a club that started maybe in and around 2010, would have gone up from junior C and to think we’ll be senior next year is phenomenal.
“But even what was brilliant beyond that was I got down for the last training session before the final, there were 28 girls togged to train and two injured on the sideline, so we were able to play 14 v 14.
“When I was growing up, there was not this many girls in the parish that could or would or maybe wanted to play football. Maybe there’s more that wanted and didn’t really see the pathway. The girls winning, we were able to go around to show the U6s, U8s, U10s at training that there is a senior team, that we win championships.”
“I just think obviously it’s brilliant winning,” she adds, “I’m delighted to have an intermediate county championship medal, that’s brilliant but maybe it’s the perspective of being near the end of my career and looking back at where girls and women’s sport has come…
“I’m just delighted that in my own rural area in north Kerry, there is now a very strong, viable club and a pathway for all those girls to see, so even if we lost I was buzzing.”
And likewise with Bohs, Galvin — who’s been nominated as the Ireland Sevens Player of the Year as the icing on the cake — concludes.
“I’ve always had Bohs after my name with all the Irish teams and again, much like Finuge, you’re not there,” she frowns. “With Sevens we’re not there, we’re not playing, you feel like you’re not contributing as much so I always wanted to get back playing with them and kind of paying them back for that honour of having their club after my name.”
No doubt, she’s doing just that and will continue to for a long time to come, as this wonderful new chapter opens in this phenomenal, multi-sport athlete’s career.
Louise Galvin announced the nominees for the 2020 Zurich Irish Rugby Players Awards alongside Caelan Doris yesterday.
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