O’Dowd’s opportunity to add to unique career

THERE are over 20 Irish stars now in the AFL Women’s competition, but one of the newest Eilish O’Dowd has a pretty unique story to tell.

Her journey to the GWS Giants began on the Gaelic Football fields of County Leitrim in Ireland.

“So I started Gaelic football when I was about five or six years old,” O’Dowd said.  

Her career started playing at club level in Leitrim before she made the senior county side. However, she found herself living up in Dublin, so transferred to a Dublin side at club level before making the senior country side of Dublin.

Unlike any league in Australia, transferring county teams is extremely rare, so O’Dowd is in a pretty unique club.

“I suppose it’s not done too often, so for me it was something that personally I found I was losing motivation while I was playing back in Leitrim” O’Dowd said.

“I found it really difficult driving and commuting to and from Dublin for training down in Leitrim while I was working up in Dublin. I went through a really tough year where I was driving back down home for trainings and wasn’t really competing and wasn’t really improving myself. Found I was kind of hitting a lull where I wasn’t in my best self and I wasn’t really doing anything to change it, so I knew myself something had to change.”

She is a midfielder on the Gaelic football field, but unlike the Australian Rules midfield there is only two midfield spots on a Gaelic field.

Her career reached the pinnacle in 2023 when she won the All Ireland Final (the equivalent of a Grand Final in any Australian league) with the Dubs.

“It was probably the highlight of my sporting career,” she said. “It’s amazing. I think at the time you don’t really realise how big of an achievement it actually is. It was months later that it really hit me that I was thinking, God, that, like, it’s fantastic.”

Then, an unexpected opportunity came knocking.

Her journey to the AFLW began with a phone call from key recruiter Michael Currane.

“I suppose it’s always been at the back of my head that could be an option, but I suppose, realistically, I never really thought that I would get an offer,” she said. “But, he had messaged me if I had any interest, and that kind of got me thinking a little bit more about it last year. I got a little bit more interested in it and was watching games at home and kind of watching more of the Irish players, seeing how they were getting on and it just kind of looked like something that I would enjoy and I really wanted to challenge myself as well to see could I push myself and develop myself to pick up the AFLW skills.”

O’Dowd is not the first Dubliner to make the trip down under, and although she did chat to Jennifer Dunne about her experiences in Australia, she also spoke with Aine Tighe, who was a close neighbour of hers back in Leitrim and she told O’Dowd to just to come out and bring her own element to the game and taking her time with learning it, that you’re not going to pick it up in your first season, it’s going to take time and to just be patient.

O’Dowd said that she has really enjoyed her time at the Giants thus far.

“I’ve been lucky in a way that I’ve been here since January so I’ve had the opportunity to take part in the VFLW where I played three games,” she said. “So, although those games were quite challenging and I found them quite difficult and was again making lots of mistakes, and I was coming off the field really disappointed with how I was playing and it was quite frustrating, but I suppose in a way looking back now It’s great that I had that time to make those mistakes and to develop myself as a player earlier on in the year.”