My Country Living: going for gold with Shirley McCay

From a farm on the outskirts of Drumquin, Co Tyrone, to dominating headlines last summer, Shirley McCay and her hockey teammates went down in history as Ireland claimed the silver medal at the World Cup in London.

Having spent her younger years on the farm, Shirley now lives in Belfast working for Ulster Hockey, playing for her club Pegasus and of course, Ireland. For a sportsperson, the next challenge is never far away and as she dreams of Olympic success, Shirley recalls the heart-breaking defeats that came before the glory, what it meant to govern sports news and how she loves nothing more than going back home.

“My dad and grandpa used to be full-time farmers, but dad is now part-time and he also drives a livestock lorry. I would have fed the lambs and herded the sheep mostly growing up, nothing too serious. I think dad was a bit protective and he knew the dangers of the farm.

“I love going home as it’s so quiet and chilled. I do my running session on the back roads into Drumquin although I hate the hills – love-hate really. My sister Lyndsey is still at home and she’s busy at the moment with it being lambing season. She’s captain of Omagh Ladies (hockey team) at the minute but I would have bashed a football at her more when we were younger!

“I went to Omagh Academy (secondary school) and that’s where my love for hockey began. My PE teacher introduced me to the sport and encouraged me not to have a part-time job, to keep playing. Gaelic would have been the main sport in my village, no one had really heard of hockey until I started playing.”

“The best thing about playing sport is friendship and you make memories for life. If you ask any sports person, their friends are the people who they grew up playing sports with. You also learn how to cope under pressure, manage your time and how to deal with nerves in high-pressured situations. There are the health benefits that come from playing sport as well – it’s unrivalled.

“I work for Ulster Hockey in a talent coach role. We put talent groups together and the players from each of the schools would come to the greater Belfast area and train together. That is a bit of a stepping stone to play for Ireland. You play for Ulster and then you go on and play for Ireland if you’re good enough.

“Playing for Ireland almost becomes a full-time job, even though we have our own careers. You’re always basing your plans around your next training session or match. We compete against teams who are ranked above us and most of them are in full-time programmes so they are essentially paid to play while we’re not. We’re juggling careers or study.

“With the infrastructure of hockey in Ireland, I don’t think it would be possible to be paid. Hockey is our passion, it’s what we do but it’s not everything; we have our own focus. We have doctors, lawyers, teachers, all types of professions and those guys don’t want to be just hockey players. It is important that they can also focus on their own careers because you don’t play hockey forever, it’s the same as every sport, so it is important to have something else to focus on as well.”

World Cup and Tokyo

“After the success of the World Cup, sometimes we still have to pinch ourselves and realise that it actually happened. We have to kick on from here and not make it a one-hit wonder. It was really special for us and it was great to put a female team in the public eye and publicise how important it is to have female role models and to inspire the next generation, whether that be hockey players or non-hockey players, girls and boys.

“We had unrivalled success and that has been incredible, but I think the build-up to that in the years before has been an accumulation of real disappointments and we have been through an awful lot. I’m going into my 13th year of playing for the senior team and three times I have tried to go to the Olympics – and three times we have failed at the final. Those times can only make you stronger.

“You’re so disappointed at the time, but you can only learn from it and become a stronger person. We’re hoping to qualify for the Olympics for Tokyo in 2020; we’re hosting a tournament in June this year and the qualifiers are in November. I’m just a girl from Drumquin and if anybody is thinking: ‘I could never do that,’ they should know that I was never the best in my team growing up, I was never the fastest, fittest or tallest, I just worked hard and I enjoyed it and did it with a smile. I think that is massive when you are going to participate. If you have aspirations and dreams, never forget that anyone can do it.”

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