Baby Aoife is on Hannah Tyrrell’s knees. Nearly six months old, a tiny bundle of oohs and aahs, blissfully unaware her mam essentially completed sport in 2023. It was quite the year, on and off the pitch.
In August Tyrrell scored 0-8 and was named Player of the Match as Dublin beat Kerry to win the All-Ireland women’s senior football final. It was the culmination of a dream after spending much of her 20s playing rugby for Ireland – she had returned to Gaelic football in 2021 to snare that elusive medal.
Tyrrell had previously won an FAI Cup with St Catherine’s in 2011, picked up a Grand Slam with Ireland in 2015 and played in the 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup, but the collection would never have felt complete had she not got her hands on the Brendan Martin Cup. The fact she finally did so just seven weeks after her wife Sorcha gave birth to their first child added to the magic of it all. Some of the best photographs from Croke Park last summer are of Tyrrell carrying Aoife around the pitch moments after that All-Ireland final.
“She’s just at that age now in the last month or so where she’s aware she has a voice,” smiles Tyrrell. “The All-Ireland final, that whole day is still a bit of a blur. Even looking back now it still feels very surreal. To have Aoife on the pitch at the end and to have the summer I had was just incredible. I feel very fortunate. The main thing was Aoife was healthy and my wife was doing well. To then win an All-Ireland with a seven-week-old was so special.”
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It is no exaggeration to say the 33-year-old has carved out one of the most extraordinary careers in the history of Irish sport – a multi-talented athlete who has become a winner of major silverware in soccer, rugby and Gaelic football.
She started out playing soccer with Knockmitten United in Clondalkin before joining the local GAA club Round Tower, and her talent was evident from an early age. Tyrrell was soon called up to Dublin underage squads where she was viewed as a goalkeeping option, though that was not where she foresaw her future. “I was playing in goals but didn’t really want to, so I was trying to explore ways of playing outfield.”
Tyrrell later joined an all-girls soccer team in St Catherine’s, first playing underage before graduating to the senior team. In 2009 St Catherine’s lost the FAI Cup final 1-0, with Tyrrell playing as a striker.
Two years later St Catherine’s returned to the showpiece event and beat Wilton United 3-1. Tyrrell played left back that day in August 2011 against a Wilton team with a young Denise O’Sullivan on-board.
By November of 2011 Hannah was on the books of Shamrock Rovers for the inaugural Women’s National League season 2011-12. And while Rovers struggled during that campaign, among the players Tyrrell played against included Katie McCabe, Áine O’Gorman and Stephanie Roche.
She continued to juggle codes at that stage but back in the Dublin set-up they were still looking upon her as a goalkeeper. She had won All-Ireland titles at under-16 and minor level as a brilliant, if somewhat reluctant, goalkeeper. Eventually she persuaded coaches with the Dublin senior B team to allow her play out the field in the Aisling McGing tournament and it was during that period that Hannah met Sharon “Chopper” Lynch.
Lynch was playing rugby with Old Belvedere and pushing towards the Ireland squad.
“She was always saying to me, ‘I think you’d be good at rugby, I think you should give it a go’. But I never thought about it too much at first – rugby had never crossed my mind as a sport I would play, it wasn’t a big thing in my family.”
But then the Ireland women’s team won the Six Nations in 2013 and their success caught Tyrrell’s attention. After a summer spent on a J1 in America that year, she returned to her studies in UCD and gave the oval ball a chance. “Chopper played for Old Belvedere, which is literally across the road from UCD, so I said I’d give it a go.”
She joined the Old Belvedere’s seconds and caused a few oohs and aahs of her own within moments of coming off the bench in her first game. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘just run away from everybody’. I was lucky I was fast, and I think I scored with my first touch. They threw me in full back, somebody kicked it to me and I just ran for my life.”
Her impressive first rugby campaign had not gone unnoticed but when the season ended she returned to the Dublin squad because with first-choice goalkeeper Cliodhna O’Connor taking a step back the Dubs needed a capable replacement. Tyrrell was Dublin’s goalkeeper throughout the 2014 National League but during that period she got a call from Stan McDowell, a talent coach with the Irish Sevens, inviting her to train with the squad on a trial basis.
After a couple of sessions she was offered the chance to join their programme full-time, and so Tyrrell stepped away from Dublin to become a contracted Ireland rugby player.
“That basically started my Ireland journey. I thought it would only last a year or two as we tried to get to the 2016 Olympics. I was like, ‘look, I’m young, I can always come back to Dublin’. This was an opportunity to play for your country, travel the world, potentially go to the Olympics, get paid, there weren’t many opportunities like that for young girls in sport back then.”
It would be seven years before she would pull on a Dublin jersey again.
“It was an amazing experience with Ireland. It’s just mad to think my life was training every day, being super fit, super strong. And I was getting paid to do that! Crazy.”
With Ireland, between Sevens and XVs, she won a Six Nations and Grand Slam in 2015, played in the 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup, featured in 103 World Rugby Sevens Series games (scoring 99 points), and also played in the 2018 Sevens Rugby World Cup.
She announced her retirement from rugby in May 2021 and that same month made her comeback with Dublin – as an outfield player. In her first game back Tyrrell scored 1-5 against Waterford. Her days as a goalkeeper were over. The endgame was to win an All-Ireland, nothing else would scratch the itch. Her return was always about fulfilling the burning ambition of her sporting life.
But 2021 didn’t follow the script, unfancied Meath beat five in-a-row chasing Dublin in the All-Ireland final. In 2022 Donegal defeated Dublin at the quarter-final stages. Tyrrell looked to have missed the boat, after a second unsuccessful season the once all-conquering Dubs appeared to be on the slide.
The core group of players resolved to go again but with several new faces introduced by Mick Bohan there was a possibility 2023 could be a year of transition rather than triumph.
“2021 hurt us an awful lot, it was my first All-Ireland final and I didn’t have a senior medal, that for me was a big driving force in keeping going and pushing me. In 2022 we just felt like we left something behind us – Donegal were brilliant but our lack of performance was a disappointment.
“We had the belief that if we got things right we could win it in 2023, but at the start of the year our thoughts were kind of, ‘this mightn’t go the way we want it to’. Everybody dreams of winning an All-Ireland but only one team can do it and at the start of the year we weren’t looking in great shape. We had a lot of young players come in and I thought maybe winning an All-Ireland was going to be a two-year process, but thankfully it all worked out in 2023.”
A secondary school history and geography teacher in St Patrick’s Cathedral Grammar School, Tyrrell stresses none of it would have been possible without support from home. “Particularly when you have a baby now in the mix, so I’ve obviously been very lucky to have somebody who is so understanding.”
But then Sorcha knows about the commitment required, she even had an All-Ireland senior medal before Tyrrell. Sorcha Turnbull was sub goalkeeper in Dublin’s breakthrough 2010 success. “That was the running joke here for ages, that she had the medal and I didn’t, so we had to stop that.”
Still, it would be wrong to paint the journey as all roses and silverware. Over the years Tyrrell has been prepared to speak openly about the challenges she faced with bulimia and self-harming from around the age of 12, which seen her require numerous hospital visits during her teenage years. “I’ve never hidden the fact that when I was younger I had mental health issues. I was helped particularly by Pieta House. Over the years my story came to light and I realised the positive impact it was having on young girls in particular.
“So, it’s just getting the message out that there is help out there and hope. I would hate for people to go through what I went through at a time when maybe there was a much bigger stigma around mental health. That is changing now and it’s improving, so I’m very happy to share my story if it might help other people get through whatever they are going through. And I will continue to do that for as long as people want me to do it.”
She is now a Pieta House ambassador. Making a difference, on and off the field.
Closer to home there are decisions to be made about her future in blue. Possibly hard ones. She knows the fairytale ending would be a wonderful way to walk off towards the sunset, but operating as a high-performing athlete is all Tyrrell has known for longer than she remembers now. Whatever way it plays out, it has been an epic journey.
And she has watched with interest recently at Vikki Wall’s similar journey. The former Meath player is currently trying to construct a rugby career with the Ireland Sevens team. “I think she will be a great addition to that Sevens team,” adds Tyrrell. “There is huge potential there for her and it could be a steal for Irish rugby. Vikki is a phenomenal athlete, we don’t produce many athletes like her in Ireland.”
We don’t produce many like Hannah Tyrrell either.
Her story will make quite the fantastical bedtime tale for Aoife one day.
