The sporting life of a Kerry rugby star
Sport remains a key aspect in the Finuge star’s routine but it’s no longer her only one
FOR Louise Galvin, the end might just be the beginning.
Last Wednesday, she made the two-hour trek to Limerick from Dublin for training with UL Bohs. On Friday, she drove back down again as they kick-started their season with a thumping win.
A day later, she lined out for the Finuge club she helped win a maiden county title, the North Kerry club narrowly losing their Munster Intermediate quarter-final clash to Clonakilty.
This week, presuming guidelines allow, she will be back at her day job, gently resuscitating the tired and aching limbs of Covid-19 survivors.
Being a physiotherapist is her new day job now that she has given up her old day job.
For five years, she globetrotted with the Irish Sevens side, a late bloomer to the third sport most feel the 32-yearold has mastered – basketball, too – but missing out in the Tokyo Olympics seared the regret she felt when she decided to walk away as the pandemic punctured dreams.
Now she deals with a different reality but still with the same attitude. The only way she knows.
Intense
“She gets here about an hour before training, out on the pitch 15 minutes early,” says a UL Bohs’ colleague. “Intense is how I’d describe her.”
And it is how several other witnesses we contacted describe her, too. So?
“Who were you talking to?” she smiles, betraying meek acceptance of partial guilt.
“I’ve been told it before. I’m like the dog from ‘Up’! If you throw me into a task, I’ll be on to it straight away. I’ll never be accused of not being alert, or languishing at the back not paying attention.”
Sport has been her life. Kerry great Jimmy Deenihan, a good friend of her late dad Aidan, a club stalwart, recalls her as a child turning up for training with the boys, replete with her own improvised changing-room, a small tent.
She was always good, too, too good. She remembers the opposition mocking their own boys when she outsmarted and outsprinted them. The intensity was innate.
“That’s probably a fear of … not a lack of talent. But I never was the most skilful in any of my sports. Clearly I could jump across sport and I have a decent level of skills but I don’t rely on them as much as others.
“So it was always a case of needing to be as fit as I can. I knew I had to be on the ball here. Then you can outwork someone else who is more skilful.”
And being a female meant it always felt like she was different from the boys. She even feels it now, recalling her stint on TV analysing the last Rugby World Cup.
“I had the imposter syndrome. People would have the perceptions of tokenism so I was carrying that. I had to win over the room I was in, then the people at home. Women get an easy pat on the back but also an easy kick in the a**e in situations like that.
“It’s not just my reputation, it felt like I was representing a whole gender’s reputation on my shoulder. I’m not messing up here!
“So I had the game-face on. Everyone knew I wasn’t that kind of person and I did loosen up. But I was still conscious I couldn’t take my eye off the ball.”
And yet, not uniquely, it felt like men felt the difference more than she did. She just wanted to be herself.
“People always say I’m comfortable in a male environment. I’ve never noticed it so it probably means I am. I grew up on a farm and we all did the same jobs.
“I’d be heaving a bale and dad would say, ‘Yerra I thought you were stronger than that’. He knew he was rising me a little.”
A good worker, she helped her cousins on the bog one day and everyone was handed gloves.
“I told my dad when Maurice gave me gloves. ‘Ah ye’re going real soft.’ I was just a natural tomboy, my brother was a year younger. And I just loved being around a ball. Maybe it’s a country thing, a lot of my friends are like that.”
Disciplines
It was always about a ball. She was a good athlete, too, naturally. As a young girl, she qualified for multiple disciplines at the nationals in Nenagh.
But there was a snag. She had been selected to play in an exhibition at half-time in the championship match between Kerry and Tipperary in Fitzgerald Stadium.
“You’re playing an exhibition and we’re going away for a whole weekend,” said the disbelieving coach.
“This is me, representing Kerry, I don’t know why you don’t understand,” came the disbelieving retort.
On her last trip with the Sevens, she wore the jersey on a night out.
“It still fits! I just like being part of a team. Even in work, I prefer that environment, there’s more enjoyment when you win and safety when you lose.
“And I don’t mind who is watching. There is an obsession in women’s sport about how many are watching us. Personally, it doesn’t bother me.
“I spoke to Annalise Murphy and I’ve new-found respect for people who just do it for themselves. It’s not for me, though. I had a few months of not having a team this year and that felt a little scary.”
She admits being a late-comer to Sevens freights certain regrets, wondering what life might have been like had she committed to it at an earlier age, while missing out on Tokyo, an ambition that at one stage seemed eminently achievable, still cuts deep.
But there is an attic full of memories, too, which will warm her through the dark, cold winter. And so too the glow of her achievement with Finuge, the club she joined before school, and which did not even have a women’s team until a decade ago.
But she won’t miss the analysis, her every day a diary full of commitments. Sport is fun now and it is not the only thing that matters. Her life may have been sport, for a time. But she always had another life.
And so sport is just fun now, even if she remains characteristically committed.
“I still want to perform but I know it’s elite so the intensity won’t be there. It’s a fine balance.”
Some might say a return to 15s may beckon, should she so wish, but the personal – she is happily married to fellow Kerry high achiever Donnchadh Walsh – and the professional are her immediate priorities.
Her job takes her into the homes of the vulnerable in the hope of getting them out of their homes, the physical effects of Covid-19 and the psychological results of anxiety having defeated the will of so many elderly people.
“They’ve been cocooning and are pretty much afraid to step even one foot outside the door. They have been de-conditioned because their muscles get weaker much quicker. So it starts with getting them out of bed.
“They just want their independence back. And then if they go to the shops, they can then start doing a bit of exercise. I can use things from sport.
“It’s what is comfortable for them in their living space. But I learn so much from them too. I love the chats. We really discard our elderly, I feel. They’ve so much experience. They all have a book in them. But a lot of them are so lonely.”
Last week, the morning after the four-hour drive and the two-hour rugby session, she helped a woman out to her garden and back. A week before, she’d had a panic attack when opening the front door. This week, though, they plan a trip to the shops.
“She was so afraid but then she said she was glad I forced her,” smiles Galvin. “I said I didn’t force her. She did it herself. I was just there to help.”