Ciara Grant hoping to make the leap from hospital ward to professional ranks

It has to be a bizarre thing having your career effectively divided into different stages. The average footballer's career involves underage training, possibly an academy, and a steady progression where you peak in your mid-20s and have an amazing end of time career or fade into the abyss. For Ciara Grant, that steady timeline was torn apart, given her other career as a doctor.

A Donegal woman, who, like many Donegal people actually enjoys paddling in the sea in the winter, Grant is now entering into her reborn phase as a footballer. Having taken time out as her medical career took off, Grant found herself still watching football from the sidelines as a member of the FAI medical staff for underage teams. She was also teaching and lecturing with the Royal College of Surgeons, happy out but still having that football itch. And then Covid hit and Grant reached out asking could she return to Donegal to help out with staffing and structural issues in Letterkenny University Hospital.

"We were about to start the league, and then on the Thursday before the league started, it was postponed. So we had just been on a 10-week preseason. I think I'd gone to Mayo for a few nights, and then this was all unravelling on my WhatsApp groups where my friends were kicking off," she explains.

"The situation in Italy was terrifying us. I had obviously been teaching for a while, I hadn't really been in the hospitals, and I was like 'I don't know, like what am I going to be able to offer people' and then RCSI was kind of going completely online. And a lot of the clinics or the teaching staff were then going back into the hospitals in Dublin.

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"So I asked could I go back to Donegal because, number one, we literally are on the edge of the world, and the infrastructure is already terrible. The hospital is understaffed. So I knew if people were coming back to Ireland to volunteer, like a lot of my friends came home from Australia, nobody was going to go to Donegal.

"I went back for about 12 weeks. But I don't want to play the hero or anything like that. I'm so far from the hero, I went back to help on non-Covid wards. I was in a general medical team helping out with Dr Steele. And I know it was busy, but, you know, some of my friends have been working the full two years and, you know, burnout levels, stress, everything. So yes, I helped out but just a little bit."

Arduous competition

And yet, although she doesn’t view it as a time for her to become the hero, ironically, it’s precisely what happened a full year later when she returned to playing football with Shelbourne, who finally became league champions after a few traumatic years behind Peamount. Grant even made it to the Women’s National League Team of the Year.

"The league is a long, arduous kind of competition. There are highs and lows, there are wins and losses, there are upsets, lots are going on, but I think when we had the big defeat to Peamount and about six weeks out, we were just like 'right we can only control what we can control, we need to win every single game from here and let's just see what happens'. And look, the stars aligned. I don't know how it happened, but it did, and even at the last match, the fans are going crazy at Tolka Park.

"At one stage, Kylie Murphy turned around to me when we had a corner, and I was like 'what is going on?' and she was like 'are Galway winning?' and I was like 'I think so'. We just had a corner and we were like 'something's happening' because the fans' flares are going off, and we're like 'this does not correlate to what's happening in our pitch'. Then even when the final whistle went and I like ran over to Pearl [Slattery] and I was like I need confirmation, like are we sure we've won?" Sure enough, with the cup halfway between stadiums, Shelbourne had won it.

Now to the present. Tallaght Stadium is absolutely hopping in torrential weather conditions. Ireland battered Georgia 11-0, a record Irish international win for both men and women. Grant managed to come on and reignite her quest to become a mainstay in the Irish team.

I think seven goals in the second half was just incredible. And everyone was just on an absolute high after that

"I think we as a whole, and camp, were just annoyed that we didn't play well [against Slovakia the previous week] and disappointed. It's not our standards, we need to, you know, keep the momentum going from the previous games. And then we knew Georgia were a bit of a weaker team. But you know, we just want to go out there and play some nice football and show what we can do.

“I think seven goals in the second half was just incredible. And everyone was just on an absolute high after that. We were even on the bench, and we were looking up, and there was a group behind the end goal, and there was another group, and they were like ultras.”

The way to go

For the future, Grant knows making it as a professional is the way to go for her. “I was just watching the training sessions, thinking I can get to this level. But I’m not at this level yet. Like, the girls are coming in, just playing professional football. When I had played back in 2015, everything had just escalated. It was just the fitness, professionalism.

“But you know, I think I’ve been back involved with the Irish team the last six months, you know, I’ve gotten to that level. And that’s I’m just excited to try and progress my football career even more. So, my goal is to try and get to play professional football in the new year. But really, as a 28-year-old going to look for football, I have a good CV, but I have no professional elements to my CV. So it will be hard, but I’m just hoping somebody will take a chance on me now, in the New Year and even go on a few trials in January”.

As Louise Gluck wrote in her poem Dawn: "Years and years – that's how much time passes. All in a dream." Grant is one step closer to realising her dream, and while she's awkward about her hero label, she will definitely inspire footballers who are reluctant to take the leap forward in their careers.

Time may pass, but Grant hopes she’s here to stay.