Emma is hoping friend and teammate Vikki Wall fulfils Olympics ambition

EMMA DUGGAN has given her blessing to Vikki Wall’s Olympic ambitions, with her close friend and Meath teammate taking up a Sevens rugby contract for 2024. Unfortunately for Meath, that means the county will almost certainly have to do without a powerhouse player who was a pivotal figure in the double All-Ireland success of 2021 and 2022. ‘Please God she gets to go to the Olympics. That kind of falls in summertime, so I’m not even going to put it out there that we would have her because we won’t. She is obviously in a contract as well. She is busy out, fully professional. She is training for hours on end and as she is learning the game, she even has to put in extra hours. It’s hard to catch her.’ Wall (right) actually transferred codes, having spent a season in Australia on an AFLW contract and Duggan fears that the expansion of the Aussie Rules League will only increase the talent drain from Gaelic football. ‘I do think it will probably continue. It is obviously an issue and especially over the next couple of years as well with the way the AFLW are looking to expand the season. So it is going to go one or two ways, players could decide to fully commit to football back here or they could go elsewhere to Australia and fully commit there. I suppose if you look at it in the way of it being an issue that we are losing the best players in the game and you don’t have that visibility really of these players in the championship. ‘Everybody has an opinion about it but these players are all of an age where you want to go travelling and do these things, sometimes you do need to take a break from football and these players are getting paid for what they do over there, so you can’t really hate them for making that decision. It’s probably that it’s just all coming at once, it’s like a swarm of players going over which probably isn’t very helpful for us but hopefully it kind of steadies off a little bit.’