Lidl National League Division One final: Donegal v Meath (Sunday, Croke Park, 4pm, live on TG4)
CRUCIATE knee ligament injuries? Niamh McLaughlin could give you chapter and verse on those.
The Donegal captain is a physiotherapist but it's through her own bitter personal experiences, the dreaded twisting and snapping and harrowing rehabilitation schedules, that she's come to gather so much information.
The first two injuries occurred when she was a teenager. The third time she did it was in 2017, while playing for Ireland in soccer's World University Games against Great Britain.
It was the final game of the tournament in China and Ireland were trailing 1-0 when McLaughlin came on as a sub.
Soon after, the Great Britain left back passed a square ball to a team-mate and McLaughlin nipped in on her blindside to intercept. She planted her left foot across her opponent's body to shield the ball 'and then I heard it/felt it' she would later write in a blog. It was the cruciate again.
She was playing for Women's Super League side Sunderland at the time and would feature for them again afterwards but a mixture of the injury, financial problems at the club and a desire to get her physiotherapy career up and running in Ireland, eventually brought her home in the summer of 2019.
Three years later, she will run out at Croke Park tomorrow as captain of the Donegal ladies team in the Lidl National Football League Division 1 final.
"People ask me do I miss the soccer but when I'm playing this now, I'm in it 100 per cent, Gaelic has always been my number one sport," said McLaughlin.
"I remember playing for the Irish team at underage levels, there were three of us in Donegal and all we did was play Gaelic. We used to play Ulster and All-Ireland finals and then it would be straight onto the bus to Dublin. We'd be the fittest in the Irish set-up.
"Look, when I was playing soccer, I was really enjoying it but when I'm here, I'm here. I'm really happy where I'm at with my life and everything around it."
McLaughlin studied at Northumbria University in Newcastle and played for Newcastle United for a spell. Then came the opportunity to play for Sunderland, placing her alongside the likes of former Republic of Ireland internationals Shay Given and David Kelly to have played for the two bitter rival clubs in the north-east.
"I'm not from that area so it didn't matter too much for me," she reasoned.
"I played in college and our manager was involved with Sunderland so I got involved there then. We played in the Championship and then the Women's Super League. That was 2017, then I went away with the university team and got injured, the ACL, and that kind of cut that."
Three cruciates certainly takes its toll.
"That's not an excuse but each of the three times I've had to take long periods out with it," she explained.
"It was twice on the right and once on the left. Just around the time I got back playing, a job came up in Santry, in Dublin. So it was a case of, 'Right, do I push on with the soccer or do I take this career progression?'"
McLaughlin chose to put her physio career first and here she is now, back working in Donegal, thriving off the field and delivering in spades on it for Maxi Curran's senior footballers.
She will be a key figure tomorrow when Donegal attempt to claim a first ever Division One title having overcome Dublin thanks to two goals in the space of just 23 seconds late in their epic semi-final win.
"Meath are in the same boat, they're playing for a first Division One title as well," said the Moville woman who is heartened by the ever improving crowds attending ladies' events around the world, noting the recent 91,000 that watched Barcelona play Real Madrid.
"Then you see someone on Twitter saying, 'Oh, they mustn't have had anything to do in Barcelona at that time'. Yeah, 91,000 people had nothing better to do! And they put on a spectacle, I think it was 5-3. It wasn't like a 0-0 or a 1-1. So it was exciting. That brings people through as well."
