The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
Derrick Lynch
Ailish Considine is Australia bound in the coming week as she prepares to link up once more with her Adelaide Crows teammates for the 2021 AFLW season.
The Kilmihil woman first signed for the Crows in 2018 after taking part in the Crosscoders International Rookie camp. She enjoyed immediate success with victory in the 2019 Grand Final, with the former Clare ladies football star kicking a first quarter goal en route to the title.
The outbreak of Covid-19 earlier this year saw her return home to West Clare, but the continued uncertainty surrounding the spread of the virus meant that her planned return down under was put on hold.
She is now due to head back to Adelaide on December 8 but while she will reach her destination in plenty time for Christmas, quarantine rules mean that she will spend the big day in a hotel room with her isolation period not due to expire until December 26.
She admits it will be tough but is looking forward to linking up with her teammates once more.
“I won’t get to train with the squad until January and I am still missing out on Christmas at home so I am not getting a piece of either cake really. It is a 15 day quarantine in Adelaide so that will last until St Stephen’s Day. I will be spending Christmas Day in a hotel room but at least there will be air conditioning so I won’t be too warm” she laughed.
With the Crows already back in pre-season training since the start of November, she admits that it is not ideal to be playing catch up but is hopeful that she can hit the ground running. The regular season is not due to get underway until February but there is still no fixture calendar set in stone due to Covid-19 concerns.
The immediate focus is on ensuring everything goes to plan ahead of her departure, a date she admits she has been looking forward to for some time.
“I have been trying to get the visa since the end of May so to finally have a date now is great. There is a kind of sense of disbelief really to be honest about it until I am actually on the plane ready to go but at this stage it is more of a relief to just have it and know that things are moving that way now. I did not expect to be gone this long so I have missed the girls and training with them. It was similar here too because a lot of my friends have moved away to other counties so I didn’t get to see much of them either. The time difference made it hard too to keep in touch with the girls in Australia because they would be going to bed when I was getting up but at least now there is a date in place for when I will get back to them” she noted.
With the Covid-19 lockdown seeing collective training sessions and gyms deemed out of bounds, Considine, who won a senior championship with Kilmihil in 2019, outlined that it meant she had to adapt in order to maintain her training regime.
“It was tough going day to day waiting on news about the visa and when I could go back. It wasn’t until the end of September that I heard my initial visa had been declined so it was a waiting game again after that. If the visa had come through I would have been flown out the next day so waiting on that news was hard. Adapting to training on my own was a big change too because I have been used to team environments for so long. Having a training programme to follow did keep me sane over lockdown, and in fairness the Crows sent me one to follow each week. It was hard to do it on my own and while it was challenging it really did keep me going” she said.
Recovery sessions are a vital part of that routine, and one advantage of being at home in West Clare was that she found an outlet for that purpose as she joined June Curtin and the Snamhai Sasta crew on Spanish Point beach for early morning dips in the Atlantic Ocean.
“In fairness June is great. She is there every morning for Snamhaí Sasta without fail at 9.15am. I have been fortunate enough to be able to join her for a few mornings each week, but moreso in the warmer weather. She knows I don’t really like the cold so she does not see me as often but it really is brilliant. It is great to have something like that to do in West Clare each day and it is great for recovery along with mental health really. It was difficult for everyone in lockdown and everyone had their own situations to deal with so it was a strange time. It can be challenging from a mental health point of view but having that exercise routine to keep up with it really helped to balance it out” she said.
Ahead of her departure, the Australian Ambassador to Ireland Gary Gray made a trip to the Considine house in Kilmihil this week while also taking in the facilities at Kilmihil GAA grounds where Ailish first kicked a ball. He was joined there by joint founder of the Australian Rules Ireland Football League and Kilmihil native Michael Currane, along with Ailish’s Kilmihil and West Clare Waves teammate Rosie Currane.
Ailish outlined that having such a positive influence throughout her sporting journey has been a huge positive.
“I really do have Kilmihil to thank for everything. This pitch is where I started kicking a ball at three or four years old with Marie Egan showing me how to solo a ball. I am fortunate to come from such a great club with a great underage structure. I was lucky then that Michael set up the AFL Ireland and that Rosie dragged me along one day to try it out. That has led to where I have got to today and I am hugely grateful for where I have come from and where it all started. I would be lost without it” she said.
