There’s a moment in every athlete’s career when the truth about motivation becomes painfully clear. For me, that moment of truth began on a main street in Kilkenny City, the day of my first All Ireland Senior Final. I was 20 years old - young, raw, talented, yes, but still carrying the belief that winning was something I did for other people. In the hours before that final, I walked through Kilkenny’s city centre completely locked into my own world. I had tunnel vis

For almost a decade, while my life was a head-spinning montage of departure gates, tournament brackets, travel, competition, pressure- there was one place that slowed everything down. Each year I travelled to Zambia to visit my uncle - a Catholic priest who had chosen to spend his entire adult life in Africa. He lived simply on the outskirts of the capital, Lusaka, in a small house amongst the people he served. There were no perimeter walls separating him from the commu

I was twenty-one years old in the summer of 2001 - a young Irish athlete in New York on a summer student visa, spending my days working, training and dreaming about what might be possible in handball and life. I had just finished my undergraduate degree, and just like so many young athletes, I imagined I had all the time in the world. On the morning of September 11th, my uncle and I were taking the A train down toward Fulton Street. He managed a bar and restaurant c

It was February, 2004. I was lying in bed in a hotel room in the Washington Athletic Club, literally sleepless in Seattle. My body was dead tired and screaming out for rest but my brain wouldn’t let me switch off. In the corner of the room, beside my gear bag, was one of those over-sized cardboard cheques and the figure printed on it - $50,000, the largest purse in handball history – would soon be hitting my bank account. It was a life-changing sum for a 24-year-old