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Limerick's camogie captain Aoife Sheehan is criss-crossing the country fronting internet sports show Game Ball,editing the Sunday Game and turning out for the county team.Phew!But the Granagh girl wouldn't have it any other way.
"CAN we do that interview on Monday John? Sorry I've been up the walls! :)" read the text from Aoife Sheehan.
That the captain of Limerick's first senior All-Ireland-winning camogie team even has 10 minutes to spare for an interview is a small miracle in itself.
As the presenter of Ireland's first ever web-based TV sports show, a freelance editor on The Sunday Game and still one of the stars of the county camogie side, one presumes that most of Aoife's time these days is spent "up the walls".
Game Ball is her nine to five, Monday to Friday job at the moment. The show can be viewed on Bebo and YouTube and is firmly aimed at the demographic which has become characterised by such social-networking/video-sharing sites.
"I suppose it's a video sports podcast. The media is constantly looking at new ways of reaching people and the internet is an obvious way to go seeing as there's such widespread access these days.
"Game Ball itself is mainly based on the GAA season but we have leeway to cover any kind of sport really," explains Aoife, when she finds that 10 minutes on Monday.
The sixth episode of Game Ball comes out this week and already Aoife has interviewed the new Director General of the GAA, Padraig Duffy, Kilkenny captain, James "Cha" Fitzpatrick, Kerry captain, Paul Galvin, and last year's Hurler of the Year, Dan Shanahan.
Interviewees from outside the GAA sphere have also been plentiful with Munster stars Paul O'Connell and Anthony Foley, Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea and Irish soccer star Stephen Hunt all making appearances.
While many rookie presenters may be humbled in the company of such sporting luminaries - and Willie O'Dea - the same doesn't apply for Sheehan, who has her own sizeable share of silverware.
With over 20 All-Ireland medals in her cabinet, a degree in New Media and English to her name and not the most unpleasant face in the world, it wouldn't be overly presumptuous to think that the Game Ball producers reckoned they had struck gold when they discovered the Granagh native.
"When I was working with the Tipperary Voice, I interviewed Paul Collins, who founded Ballywire Media," says Aoife. Her boss at Ballywire will be better known to most as the wise-cracking morning sports anchor on Today FM.
"I got on well with him and when the paper closed down, I sent him an email wondering if there was any work going in Dublin. He brought me in to do some stuff for breakingnews.ie, who get a lot of their video footage from Ballywire, and then Game Ball came around.
"I presume it was because I had such an interest in sports that they took me on. It's a great environment to work in and Paul is a really nice guy, he's always very understanding if I have to leave early for training or anything else."
Aoife and Collins are joined on Game Ball by director Lorcan Fox, who was heavily involved in the Rock the Vote campaign for the last general election. The team is completed by Michael Lee, who edits the seven-minute shows, before uploading them on to the Game Ball Bebo and YouTube pages each Friday.
Once work finishes for the week, Aoife heads towards Limerick in her car, which currently holds all her worldly possessions as she has been struggling to find permanent accommodation in the capital.
"We have either training or a match every weekend and we've seven games to play in the league before the August Bank Holiday weekend. I'll have to start going home during the week for training sessions soon as well, so that'll make life even more hectic," says Aoife.
After a whole week of talking sport and a Saturday dominated by camogie, one would think the last thing Aoife would want to see come Sunday is a hurley. However, once Sunday afternoon arrives, she is back up in Dublin sitting beside legends of the game, watching the championship action in her role as an editor of The Sunday Game.
"I probably got The Sunday Game job for the same reason Ballywire took me on. I didn't have a huge pile of experience working as an editor but they saw that I had a big interest in sport and didn't just want to be on TV. They obviously looked favourably on all the camogie stuff also, which takes up the vast majority of my CV and includes everything from my under-10 medals up.
"On the Sunday, myself and the panellists on the day would sit down, watch the match and have a chat. Going by the conversation, I'd know what parts to edit into the highlights for that day's game. I enjoy watching the matches and it's great sitting down to watch it with Donal O'Grady, Davy Fitzgerald and Pete Finnerty like I did last Sunday," she says.
"I didn't really know what to do when I came in first, I'd spend the whole time looking over another guy's shoulder asking: 'How'd you do that?' all day long. I'd done a bit of editing on different systems before though and I got used to it fairly quickly."
Between presenting, editing, hurling, commuting and house-hunting, it's hard to see where Aoife can fit in five minutes to bring her head up for air.
"Ah it's grand, sure it'd be worse if I'd nothing to do," she reassures me. "We have time for craic as well, the whole Ballywire team went to Sunderland last week and we went to a music festival called Evolution. It's kind of like Oxegen if it was held in Bruff but it was a great laugh. We broadcasted that week's show from there too."
In the rare moments when she does get a chance to take a step back from her manic schedule, she isn't yet bothered with contemplating a presenting career beyond her current online post:
"I'm just finished college so I'm not going to be looking too far ahead, I'd prefer to concentrate on the here and now and just live in my own little bubble for a while. I have my plate pretty full at the moment anyway so I wouldn't want to be getting too ahead of myself or I'd only lose track of what I'm doing now."
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Weather for Limerick
Tuesday 07 February 2012
Today
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