She’s only 25 and already has a decade-worth of inter-county service, but Niamh Rockett probably shouldn’t be playing camogie at all for Waterford, whose 2019 Littlewoods Ireland National League opener is an away trip to Wexford on Sunday.
At 16, already playing hockey, soccer, football and camogie with school, club, province and county, the talented St Annes forward was told that both her knees needed to be broken and re-aligned if she wanted to continue playing sport.
Four years later, when a specific match injury forced her to get a knee reconstruction at the Santry Sports Clinic — “they took part of my hamstring and pulled it across my kneecap to act as a stabiliser” — they discovered the constant wear and tear had eroded the cartilage in her left knee.
She was already half-way through her PE studies so this second prognosis also had massive career implications.
That she is not only still playing but received an All-Star nomination last season and will captain the Déise this year speaks volumes about Rockett’s character and, she says chuckling, “the stubborness” she inherited from her dad Eddie, also an inter-county star.
She credits Cork physio Declan O’Sullivan as the man who has kept her going with constant knee-strengthening programmes.
She’s grateful also for the county management team of Donal O’Rourke and Shane Dunphy, who led Waterford to their first senior All-Ireland quarter-final last summer, but also give her the necessary slack whenever she needs it.
“I get jeers off the girls, alright; ‘she’s sore again’, or ‘she’s going to the physio again’, or ‘she’s only putting on that limp out there’,” says Rockett, laughing.
However, real perspective was added in the past year too by a tragic loss in Blackwater Community School, where she now teaches.
“We had a child who sadly passed away from cancer. She was mad into sport and had to get her leg amputated. How lucky am I that I can still play? I never take that for granted.
“Yes, I mightn’t be 100%, but I’ll keep playing until I can’t anymore and, when I finish, it’s going to be on my own terms. That’s why I go to the gym six-days-a-week and get up early to get my schoolwork done and then go to the ball-wall.”
All-Ireland junior and intermediate titles in 2011 and 2015, respectively, yielded Waterford their senior status. They only missed out on a league semi-final last year by score difference, and the pinnacle of their breakthrough year was that All-Ireland quarter-final against Tipperary. Yet, that game rankles, as the occasion and surroundings — their first game in Páirc Uí Chaoimh — got to them. Now, they’re hoping to kick on in a tough league group that also includes Cork, Galway and Tipperary.
Rockett sees progress off the pitch too. The Camogie Association will stream six league games live this season (five more than last year) and, once-a-week, her team trains and eats alongside the county senior hurlers in Carriganore, a new parity which has added to their self-esteem.
She agrees the 2018 All-Ireland senior final “wasn’t a good spectacle” and that defensive set-ups are turning some games into free-taking shootouts, but stresses Waterford are different. “We go out and try to win every game. We don’t try to just defend and contain teams. We might be underdogs, but we’ll always try to go out and win.”
By Cliona Foley - Irish Examiner
