Issue link: http://digitaleditions.uberflip.com/i/1172058
54 | AUTUMN 2019 | www.ladiesgaelic.ie Which club do you play for and what's your position? I play my club football back home with Kilmovee Shamrocks and it's starting to ramp up again now. With the county team playing I didn't really get to the club too much all season, especially being based in Dublin, so it's nice to be able to focus on that as much as I can since we were knocked out. We're not in the top flight anymore but we're going pretty well so far this year anyway. I usually play at midfield for the club and I've been doing a bit there with Mayo this year too. My sister, Lisa, plays in the forwards. She came back into the team this year. She moved back from London to Dublin this year so it is great to have her here too. The bit of company is great and it really helps with the travelling back for training all year. Can you tell us what your job entails? I work as a Group Pensions Actuary at New Ireland Assurance in Dublin. We're experts in risk management really. We mainly use mathematical skills to analyse data and past occurrences and we try to model what will happen in the market. It's a very varying job to be honest. Actuaries work across a range of industries, but it's mainly insurance, pensions and financial industries that we work in. Anywhere there is financial risk there is going to be an actuary involved there somewhere. Is an actuary something you always wanted to be? I was always interested in maths and the business side of things, but I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I was in school. The opportunity came around to do actuary and I went for it, and thankfully it has worked out well for me. I went to college in UCD, where I studied Actuary and Financial Studies. It's a great course and it takes four years to complete. But actuary is a profession that when you come out of college there is still a lot of exams to complete before you are fully qualified. That can take three or four more years, and I've been fully qualified for two or three years now so the study pressure is off from that point of view. How tough has it been to blend football with work? I am finished up from the exam point of view but the hardest time is when you are trying to settle in to work while playing football. Most of the financial companies tend to be based in Dublin so it's something you have to work around. When I was doing my exams I wasn't playing for Mayo at that stage, I took a couple of seasons out, but it has all worked out well for me. Now that you're back with Mayo how have you found the return to inter-county football? The travelling down home for training is tough during the week but they are very good to me where I work. They understand what I am doing and they help me where they can with getting time off. You have to be able to balance everything, know what time you have to be leaving, know how long the journey will take you. It's all about good communication from everyone involved, and once you have that it's possible. There is a lot of things to manage, coming up and down to Mayo, but we train in the midlands a bit too. It means leaving work and heading straight down the road for training. It can be tough hopping in and out of the car, getting back late at night and having to get up early again in the morning for work, but it's all good, it's what I want to do. I enjoy it and if you didn't it'd be a lot tougher. Are you happy with how 2019 went in the Mayo shirt? We were obviously disappointed to lose the semi-final to Galway and we're still getting over that disappointment to be honest, but to play in Croke Park for the semi-final was brilliant. There was definitely progress made this year and a lot of new girls came in with us as well. We were happy to get to the semi- final but we are still disappointed not to make the final. We just didn't do enough on the day. Looking back we are happy to have made progress, lots of girls got game time and hopefully that will stand to us in the years to come. GUESS WHAT I DO SINEAD CAFFERKY