LIFE was a bit different for Saoirse Sands this time last year.
When Antrim pulled away in their Ulster final win over Down 12 months ago, it brought a premature end to a season when a step towards something new, something completely unknown, had long hung in the distance.
Now, with the whistle sounded in Edendork, it was right on her doorstep.
Summer after summer immersed in sport, days dictated by the fortunes of club and county, camogie was no longer a diversion as attention turned to a first tour of duty with the Irish army when Sands’s Dundalk-based battalion left for Lebanon in mid-May.
Camp Shamrock is the main base, a place where Queen Meadhbh of Connacht and Cú Chulainn, the famous hound of Ulster, are among the images that adorn the walls.
Despite the name and Celtic artwork, it is a European melting pot where 330 Irish troops serve alongside members of the Polish, Hungarian, and Maltese forces as part of the 500-strong Irish-Polish battalion.
In the first two months of the six month peacekeeping tour, however, Sands was stationed at the outpost known as UNP 6-52, one of a number of observation posts along the so-called ‘Blue Line’ – a temporary border that has stretched along Lebanon’s southern frontier since Israel’s withdrawal in 2000.
And while an uneasy peace exists, a stark reminder of how serious a situation remains came just a month after her battalion headed for home.
On December 14 2022, 24-year-old Private Seán Rooney - from Newtowncunningham in Donegal - was killed when two armoured vehicles came under fire while travelling to Beirut. He was the first Irish soldier to die while on UN peace-keeping duty in Lebanon in more than 20 years, his passing striking right at the heart of all Irish soldiers.
“I was with the 120th battalion, they were the 121st.
“There’s fellas on the trip who have been there years, they would tell you about what it was like back then, and say it’s like a completely different country.
“But it did really hit close to home… very scary and very sad. It shows the danger that’s still there.”
Vigilance is required in all day to day dealings and, despite idle hours, the job at hand is never forgotten.
There are other challenges too. For Sands, it was a first time being away from family and friends for so long, but it was the frustration at what she was missing on the field that ate away most in those lonely moments.
Just three months before leaving for Lebanon, she had played an integral part in Portaferry’s maiden Ulster intermediate title success. Gone before Down’s All-Ireland Championship campaign commenced, then following from afar as Portaferry’s county championship defence ended in semi-final defeat to Liatroim was a bitter pill to swallow.
“My battalion led the trip, there would be a good few GAA people and a lot who don’t really get it. There was only a select few into the hurling so when the championship was on and our girls got beat, I just didn’t speak to anybody for a couple of days. That end of it was really tough.
“I enjoyed it as much as you can, but it’s still work I suppose - I was looking forward to getting home. Time-wise for me, May to November, it was probably the worst time to be going because I missed so much camogie at home. I missed the championship.
“Going during the summer, the weather’s a lot better ¬- in June/July it was 37/38 degrees, you were looking for shade all the time. It’s better being over there at that time, but missing stuff at home is the bad part.
“I’d deal with the cold in winter any day before missing playing.”
And, even though there was no way to sharpen her competitive edge, Sands was at least able to tune up on the blast walls in camp. Indeed, when then Taoiseach Micheál Martin visited a few weeks after her arrival, the 22-year-old – and her sliothar - were immediately sought out.
“In the Defence Forces they love promoting females, so I get put forward for everything,” she laughs.
“I had my stick with me, I was in the outpost when they were coming out, and they were like ‘there’s a wee one here that plays camogie’.
“There were walls everywhere, so what else do you need? Especially on a Sunday, you had nothing else to be at really, and the weather was that good, so myself and another girl would go out and puck about for a while.
“That was our ritual every week.”
She may be in no rush to go on another tour right now - not while her camogie commitments command so much time – but, since first enrolling in early 2020, Sands has been left in no doubt that the army life is for her.
And it was a notion first sparked sitting in her granny’s house in Portaferry as a child.
“I always remember when [former Irish president] Mary McAleese came out there was a person behind her in uniform - I’d be saying to nanny ‘I want to be that person’.
“I got into Jordanstown when I finished school, I wasn’t sure what I really wanted to do… I didn’t want to start something and not finish it. A few people said to me, you’ll never do that, in relation to the army, but I knew I could.
“I’d talked about it that long, eventually I had to at least try it. I’m delighted I did because as soon as I started I was like ‘yeah, this is definitely for me’.”
Based at the Aiken barracks in Dundalk, the training was gruelling from the off.
Sands had seen the films and assumed they were an exaggerated version of the truth, only to discover how close to reality they were.
But growing up in the same house as dad Noel, a renowned hurler with club and county in his pomp, and working under some straight-down-the-line coaches through the years, she felt better prepared than most.
“There’s a sergeant down in the Curragh who’s married to a woman from Portaferry, and his one bit of advice was ‘don’t take anything personally’.
“But then I’m used to it – I was like, have you ever had Marty Mallon shouting at you when you’re running about the top pitch? I can deal with anything! Obviously I’ve grown up with daddy too, so I can take it.
“The training bit was hard, I did spend months getting shouted at by random older men, crawling through ditches, but that’s mostly at the start. We’ll still get sent down for exercises, troop support, where you have to do all that…
“When I started I was telling some of my friends what it was like, crawling through mud and all that side of it, and they were like ‘you’re actually crazy’. But I love the whole madness of it.”
And she loves camogie – that bond only strengthened by her absence last year.
Despite the demands of work, Sands has enjoyed being back in the county fold through the spring, with Down now focused on an Ulster final renewal against the Saffrons on the weekend of May 13/14 before the All-Ireland Championship begins against Clare three weeks later.
And, while brothers Eoghan and Daithi both share some of the characteristics dad Noel brought to battle, it is perhaps the youngest of the clan who is most similar in style.
“Even though mummy says she was more just a bench-warmer during her playing days, there for the craic, she likes to claim - because Marty Mallon’s wife is my mummy’s sister – that the hurling comes from their side of the family.
“I get told I’m a mixture of both… I probably am like mummy the way I get on, but I get told the way I play I’m the most like daddy. I seem to have got the angry wee man syndrome.”
The fire has cooled a bit, however - the discipline installed through her chosen career filtering out on the field, the alignment between the two greater than she could previously have imagined.
“Having that sporting mentality is a big plus in the army, but team sport too.
“There was a girl who trained with me who was a boxer, and I could see a big difference in how she did stuff to how I did stuff. The whole thing in the army is you have to look out for each other, and it did transfer over to camogie because when I first came back, I think we were playing Bellaghy in a challenge match and I was running round like I’d just been let out of a cage.
“I hadn’t lifted a stick or been with them in so long, it was just like ‘this is so much fun, being back with everybody’. When we were in the huddle, Marty was with us at the time, I remember one of the girls talking back and automatically I was waiting on her to get screamed at.
“You’re just thinking, he’s taking his time out to do this, we should all listen to him. So that bit of army mentality and discipline was definitely creeping in.
“Even now, I find myself thinking a bit differently.”
