Kilkenny captain Caoimhe Dowling with Katie Taylor
Katie Taylor’s visit to UPMC Nowlan Park back in June was a special occasion that Kilkenny captain Caoimhe Dowling will never forget, for all the right reasons.
Fourteen years ago, Taylor was an Irish hero when she added her name to the illustrious list of Irish gold medal Olympians, and since then she has gone to become a global icon, as well as a national hero.
The moment when that glamourous world collided with the world of Kilkenny Camogie is something that Dowling describes as “something truly incredible”.
The element of surprise involved in the world super lightweight champion calling into the Cats’ dressing room sticks in her mind too, albeit in a very different way!
“A special guest, before a match? We were nearly all rolling our eyes, thinking, ‘We’re trying to get ready here, leave us alone!” is how the Kilkenny captain describes the initial reaction on hearing the news before the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland senior championship clash with Offaly.
“We had a mascot for all our games, an U12 camogie girl. Someone said, ‘There’s a special guest coming,’ and my initial reaction was that the mascot girl was our special guest and she’s hardly going to talk to us.”
Ever the leader however, Dowling pulled her troops in line, telling them to “smile and nod,” for whoever walked through the doors, before pandemonium broke loose when they realised what was happening.
“She walks in and everyone’s jaw just drops. I don’t think I’ve ever really felt like so many people be so shocked at the one time. You don’t often have someone walk into a room and not have to tell you what their name is, but no-one needed to be told that it was Katie Taylor in front of us.”
Taylor’s chat to the Kilkenny panel was short and sweet, quickly summarising her own sporting journey, from playing international soccer for the Republic of Ireland, through to her historic achievements as an amateur boxer and some of the highlights of her professional career that spans 26 fights, 25 of which ended with Taylor’s arm held high by the referee.
For Dowling and many of the Kilkenny players however it was the sheer presence and relatability of the Bray native, who transformed the sport of women’s boxing, that made the biggest impact.
“When you’re younger, you probably just see the sporting aspect of what she did,” Dowling said.
“But when her Netflix documentary came out, I suppose that’s where I actually realised how much deeper it went, how much she changed the landscape for her entire sport. After I watched that, I could see there’s so much more to her, and behind her career, than what I knew.
“It’s funny, on match-day programmes, hers is the name that we always put down when you’re asked for a sporting hero or a woman you admire, either in sports or in whatever. It’s usually her that’s listed, and it might seem like an obvious answer but how can you look past everything she’s done, as a competitor but also what she’s done for the profile of women’s sport in Ireland and across the world?”
If the name of the game was to elevate Kilkenny’s performance on the field on that Summer Saturday three months ago, it didn’t quite hit the mark – albeit Offaly had to handle the same distractions, since Taylor also went in to share her good wishes to the Faithful County.
Source: Read the original article on www.irishexaminer.com
Written by https://futureknowledge.in/
