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36 | WINTER 2021 | www.ladiesgaelic.ie GUESS WHAT I DO NICKI BRENNAN Guess What I Do... NICKI BRENNAN SLIGO TOURLESTRANE 31 STEEL FABRICATOR NAME: COUNTY: FOOTBALL CLUB: AGE: JOB: Tell me a bit about your job? I grew up on a farm. Any labouring job wouldn't faze me. I was always doing "boys' jobs", the dirty jobs. It was actually my ex, he was a steel fabricator and started his own company at the beginning of Covid. I was pottering around just to pass the time. I really enjoyed making different frames. I had a great knack for it. He put me on the path of this course. I have been doing a lot of work and am after making my first shed totally by myself. I really enjoy the work. It's great to put in a bit of effort and make something, a big frame that you can see forever. If it is made right, it will always be standing. I really enjoy welding. I enjoy that side of it, building structures and that. It's enjoyable work. How did you get into the job? It was just boredom during the lockdown and a lack of things to do. My ex, him having a workshop, he just started opening the workshop up there. Something to do was to go up and start learning this trade and start building little things I needed around the house, just make them there on site. That's how I really got into it. I just enjoyed it. I have always seen, even with my dad, I would be helping him the odd time around the farm and stuff. Gates break and stuff like and it's great to have the option to take it away and up to the workshop and fix it and bring it back, rather than him having to go off and pay someone else to go and do it. It's a trade that will always come in handy. I know even with the way things are, there will be work forever. And it's definitely a smart option if it works out for me. Where are you based with work? I'm not actually in the job yet. I have to qualify. I am just trialing. I am an apprentice still learning. But the workshop is in Curry in Co Sligo. That is where I am hoping to be working out of once I get qualified. Down around Mayo, over in Ballyhaunis and Tooreen, there is McHales only up the far side of Castlebar, there are so many steel workshops that I could walk into and get a job. That side of the trade is a booming business even during lockdown. There are plenty of options for me locally, within a half- an-hour of me to get work once I am qualified. What are the best things about your job? If you are bored, making something that you can look at forever more. A steel structure can stay standing until they are taken down. Always being able to look at something that you did from scratch. Putting together my first shed by myself. There was just a load of steel beams there beforehand and now it's a small shed. It's really nice to see that you are able to transform stuff like that if you do your job right. I also love the challenge of it. It's something totally different. I would get all the comments like it's not something you see women do too often. When I was going through school, I never did anything close to this type of work; I never did woodwork or anything along those lines because it was considered a male thing to do. I am really learning from scratch, there is an awful lot of stuff that boys pick up over the years in the different classes. But it is great, you learn so much on the job and it is good challenge. I'm really enjoying the challenge of it. Would you recommend your career to budding footballers? 100%, you get big and strong in no time. If you're creative, it's an ideal job. It's not the first thing that girls would think about doing but there is nothing stopping them.