Mayo ladies footballer Sarah Tierney in attendance for the announcement of the FRS Recruitment GAA World Games launch at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
Re-joining the Mayo ladies football team this year has been a cathartic experience for Sarah Tierney.
Mayo captain back in 2018 when she and 11 other players departed the panel for what they said were player welfare issues, it was a course of action that cut her deeply.
She subsequently moved to Australia in 2019 because she’d fallen out of love with football in Ireland, but after suffering a cruciate ligament injury there in 2021 she made it her mission to return home when she was fully healed and don the Mayo jersey again.
That meant giving up a nice lifestyle in Sydney and a great job in a company that did visual effects for high profile films like The Batman (her name is on the credits), but such was her determination to represent her county again she felt it was a price worth paying.
“It would have been my biggest regret if I had never gone back playing with Mayo again,” says Tierney.
“My time with Mayo I have been really proud of it all and it was an honour to be captain of Mayo especially in 2017 when we got to that All Ireland final and there was a lot of hurt there after what happened in 2018 so I knew I always wanted to come back and give it another shot.
“There was a lot of hurt (in 2018). There was a lot of learning as well but look it is what it is now.
“I don’t have any grudges it’s nice now we’re all playing together we have have a great set of management there and the future is looking bright within Mayo ladies which is good.”
Tierney’s rehab from her cruciate ligament rupture was a lengthy one because there was scar-tissue that required clean-up operation.
So many footballers were sustaining cruciate ligament injuries in Australia that she didn’t want to start playing there again when she had completed her rehab, and instead came back to Ireland last summer where she met up with her former team-mate Fiona McHale to ‘sus out’ the current Mayo team set-up.
After getting positive feed-back, she spoke to Mayo manager Michael Boyles who gave her an S&C programme after she did some testing on her leg and she returned to Sydney for six months before finally making the move back to Ireland at the start of the year.
Sarah Tierney of Mayo in action against Niamh Carmody of Kerry during the 2023 Lidl Ladies National Football League Division 1 Round 2 match between Mayo and Kerry at the NUI Galway Connacht GAA Centre of Excellence in Bekan, Mayo. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
Having not played any football for two years and not played for Mayo for four years, it was always going to be a challenge to get back up to the pace required at the highest level, something Tierney admits she didn’t fully appreciate herself.
“Someone did warn me it has changed a lot since you came back,” she says. “I didn’t really think of that I thought I’d come back and hit the ground running.
“There’s a lot of learning, the younger girls are really pushing the standards as well which is great. Within our county there is so much competition for places which is brilliant and that’s what you want.
“I suppose I probably need to be patient as well having been away for four years and getting back to that standard and pace and even learning the game now there are a lot more tactics involved. During the week you are doing analysis which we wouldn’t have been doing that much of in 2017 and 2018 compared to what we are doing now.
“So far so good, really enjoying it, really enjoying the set up. I really missed the professionalism of playing county level.
“We are very lucky standards have really improved we are training down in the Centre of Excellence in Bekan.
“Training is such good quality, the game has changed quite a lot since I have been away you don’t really play your traditional six any more it is very much an attacking style and then very defensive as well so I’m still learning a lot and maybe struggling to get to the pace of it all but we are getting there.
“Things are looking good and the ladies championship is wide open at the moment and within the camp things are looking good.”
Mayo won just five of their seven games in the National Football League this year, but Tierney is optimistic they’re moving in the right direction and will be in the shake-up for championship silverware.
“I suppose it was up and down but within the camp itself we were always improving,” she says. “Problems we identified at the start we definitely fixed them up towards the end of the league, we had a lot of one point losses as well.
“We didn’t get to a League Final or anything but overall we were happy. I’d be more worried if we weren’t improving as it was going on so we are really looking forward to championship.
“I think it’s is wide open to be honest. Look at Armagh winning division two they have a super team there. Kerry had a great win in the league final, Galway are always there or thereabouts, ourselves, Cork, you can't rule out Dublin. Meath, obviously.
“There are so many teams there which is great and I think Meath have inspired teams as well coming from winning an intermediate and no one really rating them at senior and then they go and win an All-Ireland.
"It comes down to mentality. If you believe it, you can achieve it.”
