‘There are bound to be negative views but that’s okay,’ says Irish Aussie Rules coach who prepares players for life Down Under
Mike Currane is a talent spotter, a skills coach and an intermediary all rolled into one and is responsible for sending Irish players to the AFLW. Photograph: Tommy Dickson/InphoSaturday into Sunday, deep in the dead of night. A WhatsApp group zinging and pinging away, all eyes flicking between it and TV footage from 10,500 miles across the globe. When the parents of Vikki Wall and Erika O’Shea started their girls off playing football as young kids, they never imagined a watch party like this.
“Since Covid, my focus is purely on the professional side of the game. I work for the AFLW on talent ID and elite skills. I work with all the AFLW clubs and with Irish girls here who want to go, scouting some players to see their interest and matching them to clubs in Australia. I worked with all five players who went out this year. For some it’s a long process – Bríd Stack took two years, for Orlagh Lally it was a couple of months. Everybody’s different.
The apparently endless Staunton scored three goals for GWS Giants, bringing her total since coming over from Mayo to 50. That puts her joint second on the all-time goalscorers list. McCarthy’s brilliant shimmy-and-strike for West Coast Eagles was voted Goal of the Week across the league. “The thing people don’t realise really is that the AFLW doesn’t need Irish players. They might have at the start when there wasn’t a big playing pool but they have lots of academies now and there’s a significant domestic playing population there now. So when they bring over Irish players, they do it for a reason.
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