Cork’s Jennifer O’Leary calls time on her glorious camogie career

As the winter ticked and tocked with news of one big-name GAA retirement after another, camogie lost one of its greatest players too. There was no statement to the GPA this week, no roll-call of tributes. Twitter didn't fizz, the morning news bulletins didn't slip it in anywhere. Jennifer O'Leary slipped out the stage door onto a deserted street and went about her business.

This is not unusual, of course. You wouldn’t even say it’s particularly unfair. It isn’t meant as any great slight on her career and she wouldn’t take it as such. Camogie is what it is – a niche sport played at a high level by only a handful of counties. No point getting too riled up when we’re talking about a sport that’s only on TV once a year.

But at the same time, tipping the hat to a retiree of O’Leary’s standing diminishes nobody.

From Lislevane in west Cork, she walks away with four All-Irelands and six National Leagues. She is the all-time record holder when it comes to camogie All Stars, having picked up her eighth last year after scoring the goal that turned the All-Ireland final Cork's way.

“Of course I’ll miss it,” she says. “I love everything about the game. But as well as that, I love structure too. I heard Brian O’Driscoll talk about this on the radio there one day. He said that one of the things he missed most about rugby wasn’t the games or the training or anything like that. It was the schedule, having that structure in his life. Having to plan things for yourself isn’t easy when you’ve been involved in the same thing for so long and when your life has been built around that one thing.

Came natural

“I remember starting out with Cork as a young one and training wasn’t as professional as it is now. It was serious but there wasn’t as much focus on getting stronger or going to the gym or physicality and core work.

“There was very little of that really. The game has gotten faster and tougher. Years ago, it just came natural to people. You trained and you played away but you didn’t do a lot extra to what you were doing already. That’s changed now. Your whole life goes into it.”

For O'Leary, that means a lifetime spent in a car. She took two years out to go travelling at the end of the noughties and watched her team-mates win a couple of All-Irelands while she kicked her heels in Australia.

What she missed on the swings, life made up for on the roundabouts – she met her future husband Down Under. All of which would be thoroughly irrelevant were it not for the fact that Mr Jennifer O’Leary is from Armagh.

So it was that for last two seasons of her Cork career, O'Leary lived 240 miles away from her team-mates. She settled in Armagh, taught in Monaghan and trained on her own much of the time early in the year. But she made it her business to be in Cork during the summer and at school holidays and as the season started to come to a head, she beat the roads black.

For the last six weekends of her most recent All-Ireland, she drove four hours down on a Friday night and four hours back on a Sunday evening.

And all out of her own pocket, too. Camogie is stronger in Cork than just about anywhere else but there’s no mileage rate, no expenses covered. You do it or you don’t. But if you do it, you spend your own coin.

“Yeah, it was pretty immense travelling alright. But look, money is just money. There are better things to think of than what it cost to play the game. There was a lot of mileage built up and the car covered a lot of ground.

First steps

“But there are loads of people in my position, loads of people involved in camogie and nothing was covered for them in that way. It’s just a part of it. Hopefully things like that change for players in the future.”

Her retirement falls just a week away from the first steps out into the sunlight due to be taken by the Women’s GPA. If and when we do get to the stage that a future version of her has her petrol receipts taken care of, the WGPA will have led the way. For O’Leary, it hasn’t come a day too soon.

“When you think about it, the girls train just as many nights as the men. They travel just as much, if not more in some cases. A lot of the money they earn in their jobs is going into this sport between travel and everything else. I think the least that could be done for them is that travel expenses could be covered . . .

Speak out

“The WGPA are meeting next week for the first time and I’m sure that kind of thing will be high on the list of priorities. I think it’s about time really.

“When it comes to women, we don’t speak out as much as we should. If we want these things, we should push for them. I think a lot of the time, the thinking is, ‘Ah sure we never got it anyway so what’s the point making a fuss now?’

“But it’s definitely time that people stood up for themselves and said that we’re just as professional and committed as anybody else. The amount of time you give up to go training and to games means that it’s turning nearly professional anyway. Hopefully things will change.

“You can speak for yourself but you are also speaking for other people. You are trying to bring change for them as well. Definitely, I think it’s time to make a difference. I know some of those people on the WGPA board and they are strong personalities. Hopefully it will be the start of things to come.”

Whatever it is, it will happen without her. Life now is teaching in St Louis Convent in Monaghan and playing away for the camogie team in Middletown in Armagh. Her new club have made it up to senior, thanks in no small part to having one of the 24-carat diamonds of the game among their ranks now.

Her Cork days are behind her, glorious as they were.

“I never thought that I would end it this way. I always said I’d love to finish on a high and the All-Ireland win is the biggest high you can get. Even though I said it, I don’t know did I think it was possible. We lost a league semi-final but it didn’t faze us. We knew we had a bigger plan. The effort that everyone put in this year was unbelievable.

“What it’s all about is sacrifice. You have to give up the other parts of your life because you know that there’s a bigger task ahead of you. You just have to have that mental strength. And it’s not for everyone. Not everyone can do it.”

Not many did it better.