The ending of a playing career can take a while to process, all the more so when the retirement is enforced.
When rugby player Kate McCarthy, an All-Ireland League winner with Dublin’s Railway Union, suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury in 2022, the plan was to rehabilitate and return.
Circumstances don’t always align with a player’s own plans, though. Further injuries led Kate to the realisation that she wouldn’t pack down for the Union anymore – a case of luck having eluded her?
“That’s one way of looking at it,” says Kate, a native of Clooney, Co Clare.
“I suppose the flipside of that is my career probably wouldn’t be where it is today because I definitely wouldn’t be farming.”
Kate’s story in how a negative can be turned into a positive underlines the therapeutic – if challenging – qualities that farming holds.
At the same time, the bumps on her road were not exactly a barrel of laughs, beginning with a broken kneecap, sustained while walking down the stairs.
“I was distracted with something,” Kate says, “I can’t even tell you what it was.
“I slipped off the last step and there was a pop – I actually thought I’d broken the graft and it would nearly have been easier if I did.
“I think last summer I realised it was not going to happen. I was trying to rehab it and I clipped a cone while running. I just turned my ankle awkwardly and I burst two ligaments.
“I was like, ‘Do you know what now, I think this may be the sign I needed’.
“I think I’m probably only now realising how much I miss it [rugby], in a sense, because I rehabbed so hard.
“I can play some sports, I can play tag rugby in the summer and stuff and I can enjoy myself and there’s padel starting up in Railway Union, too.”
I suppose the flipside of that is my career probably wouldn’t be where it is today because I definitely wouldn’t be farming
Time off allows the mind to explore new possibilities.
While Kate and her twin sister, Munster rugby player Siobhán, did not grow up on a farm, their parents Paddy and Margaret both came from agricultural backgrounds and the girls were steeped in it from a young age, before going on to third-level studies in the area.
Even so, to go from that to taking on a farm from a standing start is something of an undertaking, but the McCarthys did it.
“I was off work as well and I think I was too bored and I was scrolling Daft.ie,” Kate says.
“We saw a farm in Broadford for rent, it wasn’t too far from home and we thought maybe we’d have a go at it.
“We debated doing beef and then we said we’d go contract rearing. My father works at Roche’s Feeds in Limerick and he knew of a few farmers, so it has worked out pretty well, to be fair.”
Even then, there were practical matters that the injury dictated.
“I was in a brace for five months – like, even when we started farming, I couldn’t drive the tractor,” Kate says.
“We started with zilch, like, it’s hard to explain to people. We had a two-wheel drive [Case International] 248 that had no brakes – and we rented a hill farm!
“We came into the farm at the end of May, maybe, and we bought the tractor in October and like, I couldn’t drive the machine because I couldn’t work the gears. I just didn’t have enough flexion in my knee at that stage.”
Now, a few years down the line, Kate – who combines the work with post-doctoral research at UCD’s Lyons Farm – has greater mobility and the 248 has been superseded by a Case-IH 4230.
Such is the constantly evolving nature of the role – not necessarily a substitute for high-level sport but certainly a way to engage the mind.
“I think the farming now is a fair challenge,” she says, “it’s been an education and a half.
“There’s times when, out of pure ignorance, you can just work your way through a job, but, mentally, it’s a test, to keep turning up every day and keep on track to a goal, if you like, or an objective of some form.
“We’re building a shed this year, we’re probably two years trying to build the shed, but we’re finally getting there.
“I think I was financially very illiterate before we started at this and I would be considered very well-educated, but there is no education like doing it.
“The idea of managing cashflow and credit and dealing with lenders, debtors, invoices, accountants and all that was just Duolingo to me.”
In a sense, the animals are the easy part – for Kate, having finished playing, it’s a coaching of sorts.
“We take them weaned and we put them in calf,” she says, “they go back then maybe six or eight weeks before they calf, so we’re a B&B kind of job.
“They’re pure pets, they’re all teenagers, a lovely age, all giddy.
“Even when I’d go back to those farms then, one farm in particular that we’re very friendly with, they’d all still recognise us, so it’s lovely.”
