NIAMH MALLON was celebrating her perfect match eight days ago.
The Galway camogie ace married Ruairí Óg, Cushendall hurler Dominic Delargy in Portaferry.
It was a case of ‘Aisle be back for today’s match against Dublin’[/caption]
Now the All-Star attacker is footloose and fiance-free as she heads straight back into action today in the Tribe’s Very League Division 1A clash with Dublin at Kilbeacanty.
Mallon availed of the gap week in the league schedule to arrange the nuptials.
And as a fully paid-up member of the Gaelic games cohort, husband Dominic understands her immediate priorities so delaying the honeymoon until the end of the year did not require discussion.
Forward Mallon transferred from Down last year after 14 seasons in red and black because the Portaferry native is not just involved in high-performance sport on the pitch.
The 30-year-old is also a nutritionist with the high-flying Galway footballers.
What brought her to the West in 2018 was her work as a sports scientist and performance nutritionist with Orreco.
Supplementing the minimum daily requirements of herself and Dominic by throwing a wedding into the middle of two inter-county seasons might have seemed hectic.
But as with camogie, Mallon has a good team around her.
She said: “The wedding side of things, if it hadn’t been for my mother and my sister-in-law Erin, it probably wouldn’t have gone ahead.
“They did super work in terms of preparation and planning everything.
“It’s been probably hectic for them. But I’ve kind of just plugged away training and working and just more or less showed up last Friday and got married!”
Mallon travelled home a fortnight ago.
She said: “It was class just to build into the wedding.
“It was a really enjoyable time and something I’ll probably look back on really fondly . . .
“With work being so hectic and with so many moving parts, particularly with training and being based in Galway, I probably hadn’t seen a lot of people in the build-up to the wedding.
“I hadn’t really seen anybody since Christmas up home. So it was nice just to catch up with family and friends.”
TIPPING AWAY
She took a few more days out but was back in the routine by Thursday.
And she togs out today as Galway look to bounce back from their first defeat of the Division 1A campaign against Tipperary a fortnight ago.
A knee operation meant Mallon’s debut in maroon did not come until last year’s league final, nearly turning the game her new side’s way.
But they still lost to the Premier and the same is the case with the All-Ireland decider defeat by Cork.
A former intermediate Player of the Year who enjoyed the ultimate success with Down at premier junior and intermediate level, Mallon understands that high-performance sport is about improvement, but finals are for winning.
And losing the All-Ireland in particular, having drawn level with the Rebels in the final quarter, hurt.
Mallon said: “The manner in which we’ve lost the game down the stretch is something that will live with us for a while, and is definitely something that we want to rectify, and we feel we can rectify, if we get our house in order coming into the Championship.
“You take the learnings, you draw on those and work on those going forward.”
HELPING JOYCE’S PANEL
Mallon is enjoying working with the Galway footballers, so much so that there was a group Championship game last year where she was not around to collect her player of the match award, having been substituted so she could hit the road and link up with Pádraic Joyce’s side.
Mallon also works on elite female programmes, studying the performance and fitness of professional athletes.
The FitrWoman and FitrCoach apps that have emerged from her company’s research are used around the world but this is only the start.
Mallon said: “The evidence is still within its infancy.
“Players and athletes are beginning to understand their bodies, and with that, their menstrual cycles — to identify individualised trends and patterns is probably the best starting point.
“The first protocol is to begin to understand the individual and then go from there.”
As the business end of the Very League approaches, Tribe boss Cathal Murray has given game-time to 25 players.
And Mallon said: “We’re only kind of three games in, but I think, we’ve probably used the guts of 25 players.
”Doing it on the training ground is one thing, but getting an opportunity to do it in a competitive, inter-county game is another and that’s encouraging.
“There’s talent in Galway and using the league to get those players experience is massively important.”
