Westmeath Muireann Scally is bringing fresh insights to Westmeath camogie with experience working at a professional rugby academy in New Zealand. The secondary school teacher also set up an Irish speaking GAA summer camp bringing a taste of the gaelteacht to the midlands.
It's not often an inter-county player has experience in a professional sporting environment, yet Scally spent five months working as a strength and conditioning coach at Auckland Rugby Academy.
Completing her undergraduate degree in sport science in the formerly named Carlow IT, she took a position as a strength and conditioning coach with Auckland Rugby Club, working with teams and athletes across all ages.
"I went off to New Zealand for a couple of months to kind of test the waters", said Scally at the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Camogie Championship launch.
"We had a bit of a mixed level. They had the main rugby club, there was the Auckland Blues but they also had some of the Black Ferns, the female All Black rugby team, all the sevens, and they had some of the Under-20 All Black men’s team.
"It was unbelievable. The exposure and even bringing it home to my own training, to see how professional athletes trained, the commitment, dedication and work.
"They started at five o'clock in the morning. They would be in the gym for two hours, then go off to their bits and pieces, they have like classes in the middle of the day, and they'd be back on the pitch that evening."
The club is based at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand’s national stadium, where Scally was exposed to the rigorous training schedule and, since coming home, has noticed the shift in standards and level of professionalism across Gaelic games.
"I got great exposure to professional strength conditioning setups. I then came home and I got into a good gym and was able to kind of use that experience and train a few teams, a few players and a lot of the general population that came into the gym. I learned a lot. It was a brilliant experience.
"To see that and then come home and compare it to GAA. It's one extreme to the other. But over the last couple years, even since coming home, you can see that level of professionalism being introduced, with the likes of double sessions."
She added, "It's four or five nights a week. Like there is always recovery, your maintenance, rehab, nutrition, hydration, it is a different level altogether."
Scally has become accustomed to working around the demands of the game, finding time to plan her wedding and tie the knot with fiancé and former London footballer Ryan Jones earlier this season.
"It was actually by pure chance we had a weekend off. Thank God!
"I said it to the girls back in November, I was like, Paddy’s weekend, is there any chance you could request that there's no games on. So, it just fell really well. Thank God for back matches", she said.
Jones is also involved with the Westmeath camogie set up, doing stats and analysis. Originally from Tyrone, he won an All-Ireland minor title with his native county before moving to London. He was involved in London’s recent win over Offaly in O’Connor Park recording stats, and currently lines out at club level for St.Loman’s, Mullingar.
In 2020 the busy couple founded an Irish speaking GAA camp. The idea was inspired by the closure of the Gaeltachts and with the temporary pause of the GAA season it was the perfect opportunity to set up a local outlet for young people in Mullingar.
"Over lockdown we obviously had a lot of time on our hands. We had come up with an idea of running an Irish speaking GAA camp, Campa Gael."
"The Gaeltachts were closed so we said look, we will try and bring some sort of Irish to the local community.
"Ryan had experience of going to Campa Chormaic in Tyrone, so we kind of used that as a model as well to base ours off", The 2019 Camogie Soaring Star explained.
"It involved Irish speaker classes in the morning and then all the GAA that we did in the afternoon was all through Irish as well. It was brilliant. It took off really well. We didn't expect it to be as successful as it was.
"We ran it for three years. Just this year getting married and stuff we said we have enough on our plate, so we said we would park it for now and hopefully in the future we'll be able to get it back on again.
There were 120 children between the ages of 8-15 participating each year. Local primary and secondary school teachers were recruited to get involved, many of whom played at the inter-county level, aiding in developing the camp's culture.
"It brings a lot of normality around the Irish language and it's taking that taboo away from it. It’s not all about grammar, learning poems and reading stories. We just tried to encourage more spoken Irish, or the 'cúpla focal’ it is important to learn and to know.
"A lot of people have a lot of negative attitude towards it. So we're just trying to promote a little bit more."
The 31-year-old has won All Ireland titles in 2017 and 2019, and hopes to climb the steps of the Hogan Stand once more this year as Westmeath defeated Derry in the Division 2A league final.
"We didn't reach our potential last year, yet, we still got to that level and got that stage of the championship.
"Already we've shown that there is added belief and commitment this year with that league title.
"We'll keep our heads down and keep working hard and hopefully come out with a bit of silverware at the end."
Westmeath begin their Glen Dimplex All-Ireland intermediate championship campaign against Cork this afternoon.
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