After spending two years on the sidelines, with a serious knee injury, a late substitute appearance against Mayo last month was a special moment for Waterford ladies defender Megan Dunford.
“It was an emotional day,” she told WLR’s Lár Na Páirce show. “Not only for myself but my family and the team. They’ve seen me go through a lot. For them to see me get on, it meant a lot.”
She got back sooner than expected. “The recovery was going really well. It actually got pushed forward so I could get on for five minutes.”
In 2023, she came off the field in agony after just four minutes of a Munster championship game with Kerry in Fraher Field. “I knew straight away that something very bad had happened. I ended up having double surgery on my leg to repair some patella tendon and three other ligaments that were ruptured. It was a long, long process.”
Physio Michael O’Sullivan played a big part in her recovery. “He has been amazing for me. I call him my physio but he is probably my therapist and my counsellor as well! He guided me through difficult times. I didn’t see me being able to get back to be honest. Just trying to bend your knee for months like how could I possibly go back again? I had my family, my friends, my boyfriend, my team mates; I was overwhelmed with the support. Even the management last year kept me involved and that made a big difference.”
Being part of the Waterford ladies team again means the world to her. “I’ve been playing since I was 12 on the Under 14 county team. People were saying ‘now you have the time to do this’ and ‘you have the time to go there’. At the start, I said ‘maybe, they’re right, I do have this time.’ What I learned is the grass isn’t always greener. When I was forced to step back, I realised that leaving left a big hole in me. Nothing, even if I tried, was filling the hole. I still had that urge to play. I put my mind to it that I was really going to try my best to get back. I feel a lot more myself.”
Listen back to the full interview with Megan Dunford from Friday’s Lár Na Páirce.
