It's a few weeks now since I took a 12-year-old relation along with me to a Leinster League hockey match, her first taste of live sport in the open air, as opposed to the `sitting in front of the telly in a heated living room' version.
She seemed to enjoy the experience, even if there were no slow-motion replays of the goals or Christmas toy ads at half-time. She had just taken up hockey herself in school, admittedly after efforts to retire from the game once she heard there was training on a Sunday morning. "But that's when I sleep," she complained.
She had also hoped hockey would be categorised as a `subject' and would clash with Maths, allowing her to swap her protractor for a stick, but it wasn't to be. By then it was too late for her to back out because she had to, somehow, justify the purchase of more equipment and sports clothing than the average nation takes to the Olympic Games. She wasn't mad keen on the compulsory shin pads and gum shield - the former, she claimed, made her legs look like tree trunks, the latter, she said, made her retch. When I pointed out that, in my day, girls were girls and girls' blouses were things girls wore (ie we didn't have gum shields and chin pads), she explained the school would have the bejaysus sued out of them if even one of the girls ended up with a chipped tooth. (Huh, in my day you were a big wuss if you didn't have at least one chipped tooth. "Yeah, yeah," she sighed, rolling her eyes heavenwards).
Last week she had her first match, a 15-minute affair against another team of hockey novices. They won 1-0 and she was over the moon, but she complained that most of her body (her legs and face, in particular) had turned red during the game and didn't revert to their normal colouring until at least a few hours after the final whistle. "That's what happens when you drag yourself away from The Simpsons and exercise for once," I explained snootily, in the course of a lengthy lecture that would have driven me bonkers if I'd been on the receiving end of it when I was 12. So much for vows that you'll never end up sounding like your mother. It came as a mighty relief, though, to hear that she was continuing her hockey career despite the trauma she suffered midway through the first half of the match I took her to.
Everything was going fine up until then, with Hermes and Pembroke Wanderers entertaining her in fine style at Belfield. But then she asked the question.
"Do they do this for a living?" Trouble was, the question was posed in such a way that it suggested she assumed the players before her were being paid. It was just a question of how many noughts featured on the monthly cheque they collected. (Tell her a footballer is earning £25,000 a week and she'll say "Why? Isn't he any good?")
"God no," I told her. "They're amateurs - they do this in their spare time. They all have jobs or they're students."
The expression on her face - as she watched these 22 players run themselves in to the ground for the love of their sport - suggested she intended placing an ad in Buy and Sell for her hockey stick, shin pads and gum shield. How do you explain amateurism to an under-13-yearold who's fed a daily diet of `Ronaldo earns £50,000 a week for 90 minutes' work' headlines? Worse, in the context of the Irish women's hockey team, how do you explain that not only do they not get paid they must combine their sporting careers with their jobs and studies, with, at best, only their bare expenses covered? Last weekend I met Irish coach Riet Kuper at the Senior Interprovincial Tournament in Cork where she showed me the senior squad's programme for the build-up to next August's European Nations' Cup in Germany. "Professional demands for amateur players," she conceded as I browsed through the contents. Included was a training week in Spain, three four-nation tournaments (one in Canada), trips to Holland and the Czech Republic for matches, nine weekend training camps, eight midweek training sessions, and a possible 20 friendly matches before the team even arrives in Germany. Add that to all the players' personal fitness programmes.
"In a way it is very unfair to ask these players for that level of commitment," said Kuper, "but we cannot ask for anything less because if we don't we might as well forget about competing at the highest level internationally." Since the programme was presented to the 26-player Irish panel amazingly only one has pulled out, due to work commitments that would not allow her give the time required. The rest will spend the next eight months juggling their work and personal lives with the demands of their country. And few, if any, will complain. Their commitment is quite extraordinary.
If past experience is anything to go by most will receive limited co-operation from their bosses at work, most of whom will expect them to use their holiday time for their hockey commitments and report in to work the Monday after their European Nations' Cup exploits end.
There'll be no Government grants to help them out, individually, either. To date funding has been aimed solely at individual athletes and not teams, so for most the honour of representing their country involves huge personal sacrifice. Amateur in name only, of course. For most of them sport is very definitely their life, if not their living. The 12-year-old isn't the only one who's left in awe of their commitment.
