“Peacetime canvassing” was how our local TD, Tom Crawford, established his base.

People appreciated the fact that a politician showed his face when there was no election on the horizon, seeing if anything needed doing.

Usually, the tasks were manageable and he was repaid with a vote come polling day, which was of course the aim all along.

It was one such visit to a house on a dormant farm, at the edge of the parish in the 1990s, that brought our camogie club two of its greatest imports.

Upon meeting Helga Kastenmaier and finding out that she lived with Karen Upton, Tom’s first reaction was to make a joke along the lines of: “An English woman and a German woman? It must be war when ye have a falling out!”

He was too busy congratulating himself on that to properly take in what Helga was telling him – they were a couple and Karen was giving birth to a child that Christmas.

She had played hockey to a high level in England before she and Helga decided that they wanted a slower pace of life

“Ah sure, it’s a nice time of year for it,” he said, before clocking Karen’s hockey sticks in the hallway. If there was a cause Tom cared about almost as much as his re-election, it was the club, and he suggested that Karen take up camogie after having the baby.

She had played hockey to a high level in England before she and Helga decided that they wanted a slower pace of life. With no hockey club in our area, the invite from Tom was worth checking out, though the arrival of herself and Helga certainly set tongues wagging.

That said, Toddy Warren got the wrong end of the stick when told about the new development one night in Byrne’s pub.

“Two of Les Behan’s have joined?” he asked. “Sure, who’s Les Behan? I knew a Des Meehan alright and he has a couple of daughters, is that who you mean?”

As was often the case, it fell to Nóirín Byrne – who was managing the camogie team at the time – to cut through any awkwardness before Karen’s debut in a league game against Dunaracktan. “Girls, we know there’s an outsider here among us, someone who does things differently,” she said.

“But it’s not Karen’s fault that she’s English and had to play hockey, and as far as we know none of her relations were Tans.”

[...] she became known as the BFG – Big Friendly German

That broke any tension and she further endeared herself to the team with her prodigious goal-scoring ability. She rarely bothered to even try to lift the ball, with her close ground control from the hockey giving her a real advantage on the field.

Helga played a couple of games for the junior team, but her value to the club proved to be in an off-field capacity – her accountancy skills were put to use in the role of treasurer as she became known as the BFG – Big Friendly German.

Any sense of the girls not being like us came from the nuances of language rather than sexuality. In her first year, Karen cried after the team lost their last league game until it was explained to her that the league was only the secondary competition and the championship was the one that mattered. Similarly, Helga once included “Yokes” as an item on the club’s income and expenditure account after a discussion with Roly O’Shea, who couldn’t think of the words “GPS trackers”.

Noel remains a key member of the GAA club and his mothers are pillars of the camogie outfit

After the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015, Karen and Helga’s son, Noel – then a member of the U21 hurling team – celebrated by stitching rainbow flags across the front of the jerseys for a championship match. It obscured the logo of the sponsor – none other than Tom Crawford TD, who of course claimed credit for allowing it to happen – though, in fairness, he also paid the fine passed down by the county board for political messages.

Noel remains a key member of the GAA club and his mothers are pillars of the camogie outfit, though right up until her retirement Karen would talk of “cup finals” and poor Helga still struggles with the vernacular.

“The people are nice, but sometimes I wonder if they are fully aware of my situation,” she told me one day. “Lots of people talk to me and say things like, ‘I was talking to your man,’ or ‘Your man did that thing,’ but that’s the whole point – I don’t have a man.”