I’m still hurting missing out on World Cup
IRELAND v SWEDEN BUT MEGAN CAMPBELL IS NOW IN A HAPPIER PLACE
PHYSICALLY, Megan Campbell was back where she wanted to be.
But in her head it was a different story.
It was October and there were Nations League points at stake, home and away against Albania.
Campbell was mixing with her Ireland teammates once again.
It should have been her happy place, yet she was plagued with self-doubt.
Imposter syndrome.
“I’m honest enough to say I really did struggle in that Albania camp mentally, because they had come off the back of the World Cup,” she says.
“I thought, should I be here? Should I just pack it in? There are really good players around me and I don’t know if I can
Irish Daily Star keep up in that sense.”
Campbell’s World Cup dream was dashed in heartbreaking style, after she fought the battle of her life to be fit in time.
In a diary piece with RTÉ, where she worked during the tournament as a pundit, she wrote of the gut-wrenching moment when she realised she wouldn’t be heading Down Under.
Official
“Two days before Vera (Pauw) made the official announcement, my fate was sealed,”she wrote.
“My last session didn’t go well — I couldn’t run pain free — and
I knew then the game was over. I wasn’t going to be 100 percent to face Australia.”
Campbell, famed for her outrageously long throw-ins, was on punditry duty again for the team’s historic Aviva Stadium bow. Her dream from childhood was to one day play on that hallowed turf.
More pain to carry into the Albania camp.
“Mentally I am still hurting from missing out on the World Cup,”she continues.“It was that balance of trying to get my head around it and then saying, do I still want to play football?”
She kept those feelings to herself.
“I probably struggled more mentally internally, because I didn’t want to show that I was struggling or that it was affecting me.
“But it was probably more obvious than I thought it was. I’m sure people could tell. I think I just struggled with the day-to-day of being in and around the squad.”
Spoiler alert: Campbell is in a much better place now.
Against France in Metz in early April she made her first international appearance in 14 months, as a half-time substitute.
Four days later she came off the bench again, this time against England at the Aviva Stadium. Childhood dream realised. So how did she turn things around?
“It was like a switch for me after Albania,” she explains.
“I had to change my focus and change my outlook on why I was in the stand and what this camp was about.
Speaking
“It wasn’t until I left the camp, after speaking to Eileen (Gleeson) at the back end of the camp, that I realised what it was about.
“Eileen and Emma (Byrne) were like, ‘We want you around the team, you are still here as a main player, this is an introductory camp, it’s not like, you’re in, you’re not playing and then you are going again’.
“They said they wanted to build me back up again. When I stepped away after that camp, I was like, okay, I’ll give myself some time and see how I get on.”
Campbell also sought professional help to make sense of it all and is now an advocate for sportspeople investing as much time in their mental health as their physical wellbeing.
“I think for a long time as a player I struggled to go, yeah, I actually need help,”she explains.
“You’ve got that trust issue where, if I speak to you, are you going to tell the manager that I don’t feel good, and then the manager is not going to play me because he thinks you are not mentally right?
“You have all these things, because it has happened previously where you say something to a psychologist who works within the club and then the next day the assistant coach and the manager is coming over to you, putting their arm around you, asking if you are alright.
“Then suddenly you are not playing, you are on the bench. So then you start to retreat and think, can I trust you with what I’m saying.
“I think it took me a long time to accept that it was okay to speak, but I met the psychologist who I worked with through Liverpool at the time and they were external to Liverpool Football Club.
“He was brilliant and I worked with him a lot. It just really helped me to be able to process things and micromanage.
“A lot of the time I think of the worst-case scenario, when I just need to break things down and not think so big.
“He was like, we need to put you in bubble wrap now — that was after the World Cup — just protect you as a person. Nevermind the football and nevermind anything else, it’s about you.
“Yeah, it took me a while to get past the World Cup, but it