By Michael McMullan

DOWN’S Saoirse Sands has played enough camogie to know what’s at stake in Friday’s Ulster final with reigning champions Antrim in Cargin.

The Portaferry star has been looking on from the outside as her teammates prepare for another decider.

A troublesome knee problem was diagnosed as the dreaded ACL injury and she awaits an operation next month.

She is keeping herself ticking over by swimming. Prehabilitation is her new word.

It will give her a better chance on the recovery path after going under the knife.

Sands is still seen as one of the leaders in the group and is mentally logged into Down’s season.

“Obviously Antrim beat us last year, so then it’s now a story of looking to redeem that,” she said of the temperature in the group.

“We had a good win there against Armagh so that helps.

“We’re looking forward to playing it and there is that kind of the vibe around the camp.”

Much like the county’s hurling rise, one of the key camogie cornerstones has been keeping a spine of players together.

While they’ve lost leaders in recent years, Sands points to a core of the minor group she played alongside that now bolster the team.

“A load of us from that seasonhave stuck around, that’s who the team is now,” she said.

“There are also ones that are a couple of years older, that have were in the All-Ireland winning team in 2020.”

There are also players who lost to Cork two years before that but unity is key. It’s something they’ll lean on again this weekend.

“We’re very much a team and everybody gets on,” Sands said.

“Everyone knows each other well at this stage, so we are always aiming to bring that to the field.”

GAA has always been rooted in her family. Saoirse’s father Noel hurled with. Uncle Martin Mallon played for the county before a stint as manager. Former Down camog Niamh Mallon – now playing with Galway – is a first cousin.

“My mummy and her mummy are sisters, they like to claim that the hurling comes from their side, because they’re the common denominator,” Sands said with a giggle.

Sands knows teamwork better than most. While studying at Assumption Ballynahinch, university life was never something that interested her.

FRONT LINE…Saoirse Sands is a soldier in the Irish Army

February marked six years since joining the Irish Army. Her parents had put her off the idea until the A-Levels were banked.

She began at Aiken Barracks in Dundalk and is now based in the Curragh.

“For the past two years I’ve been doing a course through the army, it’s called the technician scheme and I’m doing electronic engineering in Carlow IT,” she said.

“The army people you’d see with the president on All-Ireland final days, that’s who I wanted to be.

“Once I finished school, I took a year out and it was always on my mind to join.”

During her time in Dundalk, Sands was enlisted for a six-month tour overseas, to Lebanon.

Camp Shamrock is the main base in Lebanon but troops also had to spend 10 weeks at Camp 6-52, an hour away, an outpost on the Israeli border.

“It was a year before everything kicked off,” Sands said. “I know a fella from Portaferry and he’s out there at the minute.

“His experience would be very different to mine. I’m not going to say it was a lot more relaxed, but it wasn’t what it is now.

“You’re out there doing a job. Elements of it are scary but, we’re also trained for it so you have an idea of what you’re going out to before you go.”

The small ball

While she had a hurl with her and took time to puck a sliotar off the concrete walls of the compound, it wasn’t camogie as she knew it.

Camogie and army training go hand in hand in terms of fitness. Discipline and respect are other cornerstones that transfer across.

“The army’s big on team,” Sands added. “When I was in training, it was very much like a buddy-buddy system.

“For example, if I was thrown off parade for my uniform being untidy, then my buddy was as well. We’re all a team here.

“That’s a huge thing in the army, because you’re literally trusting the person beside you with your life.”

Away from the army and back on planet camogie, Sands can’t pinpoint exactly when her ACL gave way.

Before Christmas, she hurt her knee while not playing camogie and wasn’t overly concerned with some swelling.

“We played a challenge game with the county and it went from under me,” she recalls.

Thinking it was just tender, she downed tools and began some rehab. After a holiday in Australia, it was still lingering and she gave in to getting a scan.

“The scan told me it was a partial tear but when I went to see a surgeon, he told me it was a full tear,” Sands said.

For now, she’s backing the Down girls to push themselves to the max on the field. There is a wedding to attend and a course to finish in the army before June and her knee operation.

When you’ve been stationed along Israel and the Lebanon border, far, far, away from the shores of Strangford Lough, battling back to fitness is a different type of assignment.