With 21 Irish players in the AFLW and the Irish Banshees holding every international and European title for which they're eligible to compete, women's Australian Rules football in Ireland is at an all-time high. A not insignificant part of that success is due to Siobhan Sheerin, who's captained the Banshees to success after success for the past two years.
Like many Australian Rules players, Siobhan Sheerin grew up playing Gaelic football, and it was a long while before she tried the sport that would take her to the international level. In Sheerin's case, she started Gaelic football as a child at her home club Glenelly and then played county football for Tyrone from the time she was 11, winning the Intermediate All-Ireland Championship and Ulster final.
But things changed in 2021, when Sheerin was dropped from the county panel — "a bit of a shock," as she was in the starting 15 the previous year; she suspects politics were involved. With rugby season finishing up (Sheerin plays for her local team the Omagh Accies, and was recently on the Ulster development squad as well), and having lost her father a few months before, Sheerin describes herself as "kind of at a loose end... and then somebody goes, 'You know, the Ulster Kooks are looking for players, why don't you try it out?"
"So I went up to Magherafelt one Thursday evening, and I tried it, and I was like 'I'm actually not too bad at this sport!' and I went from there! One door closes, another door opens."
That's certainly true in Sheerin's case. The Ulster Kookaburras are impressive enough — two grand finals in the past two years ("unfortunately runners-up in both", Sheerin admits, "but we're developing, and that's great") — but since that fateful day, captaining Team Ireland to victory in international tournaments has become practically expected for Sheerin, as success after success has come at the Clover cup, the Euro Cup (9-a-side) and the European Championship (18-a-side).
On the Banshee's recent dominance in the Championship and the Cup — for example, not conceding a single point in the Championship until the final, against the Great Britain Swans — Sheerin said simply, "It felt great."
"Don't get me wrong, sometimes we do wish the competitions were a bit tighter because it makes the wins all that much sweeter, but it does prove the dominance of the GAA and rugby background, and how beneficial it is to have other sports."
"We have a lot of girls who come from a GAA background, maybe they played with their counties, we have girls who are playing rugby with their clubs and provinces, and you can see those interchangeable skills."
The girls have a lot to be proud of. In the 3rd day of competition at the European Championship (held in Zagreb, where the Banshees amazed the locals by going swimming in the cold lake), they broke the world record for highest score in a game, scoring 46.24 (300) against Croatia — "just phenomenal", as Sheerin describes it.
"It was one of the umpires who said 'Why don't you go for breaking the record tomorrow if you can, in the semi-final', and we looked at our scoreline against Croatia and I said 'No harm girls, but we could score 152 in 40 minutes, so if we don't hit 300 in 80, we're doing something wrong."
Sheerin helped the team stay motivated to reach the target by setting smaller goals, like having everyone on the team score a goal. It's clear that Sheerin's role as a captain is one she takes seriously; she talks about the importance of being there for her players as both a listening ear and a middleman with management:
"Thankfully I can listen, and I have the gift of the gab, and I've been in certain situations before both positive and negative, so I feel like I can give advice. And if there's an issue I have no bother taking it up with management and having serious conversations."
Sheerin also has the painful responsibility of telling the team which two players hadn't made the cut for the grand final — although her attitude is very much not dismissive of players on the bench:
"I don't like the word substitutes, I like the word reinforcement. Two or three girls unfortunately had to sit out of [the final of the championship], but we made an agreement that they're still reinforcements so they took the warmup and they're still a part of the whole process, of getting game-ready, and being runners for water and information and they're still very heavily involved."
Still, the team was dispirited before the decider, and Sheerin was worried. "I took 5 minutes to myself while I was putting on my boots and I was thinking, 'Okay, if we don't up our game here, this isn't going to go well." So, she gathered the team in a circle and played them Al Pacino's famous 'inch by inch' speech from the end of Any Given Sunday ("Either we heal as a team or we're going to crumble. Inch by inch... On this team, we fight for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch...Look at the guy next to you. Look into his eyes. You are going to see a guy who is going to sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it, you are gonna do the same thing for him...").
"I remember girls looking at each other and laughing looking like 'Siobhan has officially lost the plot here', but in my eyes it worked because the warmup did a 180!"
The excitement kicked in as the national anthem played, and the Banshees soon had their first goal.
"It was definitely a hard-hitting game, I think I hurt my back in the first quarter, but you didn't want to come off, everybody was hitting hard and nobody wanted to give up. We came off that day with a lot of bruises and sore bodies."
They also came off with the Championship, after a comfortable 115-point win, 18.16 - 1.3.
"It was definitely worth it, when you could hear the ten-second countdown and go, 'We've done it, we've done it again, we're still unbeaten'... There's no better feeling."
The Banshees' success will surely contribute to the growth of women's Australian football in Ireland, which is already growing as more and more Gaelic players are drawn to the AFLW by the opportunity to play professionally. But though she welcomes the addition of new players, Sheerin also values the low-key culture that comes with Australian football's current status as a niche sport in Ireland.
"It's so much more relaxed, unlike Gaelic and rugby. Nobody knew who I was, for example, so automatically you feel there's a pressure taken off you. People were lovely. There are girls that I play with in our club where this is their first sport. There's just a different vibe, there's less pressure. Of course we all want the same thing, everybody wants to win the championship, but with the AFL in Ireland it's also 'let's get out there, let's get people playing sport, let's get a good community."
When asked what she'd say to anyone interested in playing, Sheerin immediately responds "Go for it."
"It is completely different to any other sport I play, it can be as physical as you want, as athletic as you want. Anybody can join, there's always something going, if you check any of the AFL Ireland pages they'll soon direct you. And I've found there's so much more opportunity, especially for travelling — I've been to Amsterdam, Croatia, Edinburgh, parts of Ireland I probably wouldn't have been to otherwise."
"Definitely, if you're looking for travel, if you're looking to find friends — I could make a phone call right now to anybody right now and they'd put me up for a week — it's just unbelievable, and so many opportunities come from it."
To find opportunities to play Australian football in Ireland, check out the AFL Ireland website here.
