Katie Mullan making the most of the switch back to camogie

When the captain of the Ireland women's hockey team was little, she did not dream of World Cups and Olympic Games.

Instead, growing up on the family farm between Coleraine and Portstewart, her life beat to the rhythms of hurling and camogie, mixing it with the boys right up to 16. It was family and friends. It was Eoghan Rua.

In time, Katie Mullan’s ability with another stick pulled her away and she has led her country to phenomenal success, earned a huge profile and became a role model not just for young girls but anyone with big dreams. And done it all with that broad, beaming smile that just lightens up the day.

The 27-year-old has led her team to a World Cup final, to an Olympic Games and is now in the middle of preparations for this year’s World Cup in the Netherlands and Spain in July. They aren’t the only preparations taking place, however.

Mullan is now just two caps shy of a double century for Ireland, having made her debut in August 2012 against Wales as an 18-year-old. She had garnered a second AIB All-Ireland intermediate club camogie title with Eoghan Rua the previous March but the focus on hockey reduced her to a substitute’s role on both occasions, though that didn’t stop her scoring the winning goal in the 2011 semi-final.

The bonds were never severed. So when she needed them, they were there and she invariably repaid that with a reprisal of the nose for goal that has characterised her entire camogie career.

When her world was rocked by being dropped from the national squad for the European Championships in 2013, she was a key part of the team that secured the Ulster senior title – scoring 2-01 in the final – and they gave All-Ireland champions Milford the fright of their lives before the Cork side completed a