Gaelic football has brought me to so many new places

I’m 26 and I’m from Killygarry, Co Cavan, and moved to Perth, in 2011, where I play with the Western Shamrocks.

I think there was some sourness originally in some quarters that a ladies team was representing Australia and New Zealand rather than a men’s team.

It was decided that one team would be going and it went down to a vote at congress and the ladies won. Some people weren’t happy about it. The word sexist came in there, ironically, somewhere along the way. I appreciated getting ahead of men for a change.

I think there’s a lot of pride among Irish people in Australia about this team. A lot of people are going out of their way to talk about it and congratulate us.

It’s a nine-a-side competition in Abu Dhabi, with 12-minute halves. The Australasian squad is made up of two players from each of Australia’s five mainland states and two from New Zealand. The South Australia squad members are both Australian born and bred, and the rest of us are Irish.

Gaelic football has brought me to so many new places and has helped me meet so many people including lifelong friends. To play for Australasia in the World Games is the biggest opportunity I have even been given, a real one-off.

Only five or six of us in Western Australia were available to go to Abu Dhabi, but I was lucky to get picked. It could have gone to another couple of girls that were just as deserving, but I wasn’t going to turn down this sort of opportunity.

I’ve been fortunate with the support from my workplace too. I’m a secondary schoolteacher and they were more than happy for me to go, even though it’s not ideal when it happens in the middle of a term.

I know some of the players from other teams. I played college football at Maynooth with girls who are playing for the Emirates team and I played in New York for one season so I know some of them, and I know a few from home too.

It’s an opportunity that won’t ever come up again and it wouldn’t have come up if I hadn’t moved to Australia. It’s only really hitting home with me in the last two weeks as people talk to me about it and I realise what a big deal it is.