It’s hard trying to train on your own
RUGBY
Daire Walsh
FOLLOWING a difficult period of adjustment, Ireland women’s sevens star Emily Lane admits she is slowly coming to terms with the absence of sport as the coronavirus continues to spread across the globe.
The Mallow native was due to be in Hong Kong this week in preparation for the latest leg of the HSBC World Series, but the outbreak of COVID-19 ensures the squad will remain idle for the foreseeable future.
“We were supposed to be leaving [last] Sunday. It’s a bit mental really when you think about it like that. It’s hard now that we’re going into a block where we won’t be playing any rugby. It’s going to be hard going back then in the summertime. Hopefully we’ll be back in the summer for the Rugby Europe competitions,” Lane said.
“It’s crazy that we could have been on the other side of the world right now. It’s been hard trying to train on your own. It’s awful having to do running sessions alone in a terrible, grass field basically. I’ll be so grateful to get back to Dublin and get back playing with the girls in the HPC [High Performance Centre].”
“It’s tough, but we’re all keeping in contact. We’re doing video calls and we had a quiz, just trying to keep ourselves in the loop with everything we’re doing. I think I’m adjusting okay.”
Despite being out of competitive action since the beginning of February – a two-day tournament at the Bankwest Stadium in Sydney – Stan McDowell’s charges had already put in considerable groundwork for their proposed trip to East Asia.
“We were in France on a training trip when we started to hear that everything was getting a bit crazy. We came home at the start of March and were in training Thursday and Friday, but there was no mention of things closing at that point,” Lane recalls.
“A few of the girls were saying ‘bring home your boots, bring home everything. We might not be back up’. Then we got the email on Sunday night saying that HPC was closed, we wouldn’t be training anymore.”
In addition to maintain a certain level of fitness, Lane will also be factoring college work into the equation over the next couple of weeks.
While she is currently ‘slow tracking’ the third year of a biochemistry course in UCD, she is nevertheless mindful of her responsibilities.
“Unfortunately, I do have to keep up with my studies. Basically I’m doing third year over two years and I’ll probably do the same in fourth year. At least I have a lot less workload than some of my other team-mates. That’s helpful, but it’s hard being at home,” Lane added.