It’s this push and pull between something you love but that doesn’t necessarily always love you back that Eimear Ryan gets so right in The Grass Ceiling.

It bleeds into other aspects of your life and you start to second-guess yourself and the world around you. It’s in these moments that the glow you get from playing sport and being surrounded by people who share the same mission starts to dim a little. We had a match too but there was an unspoken acceptance among those around us that it mattered less. “The lads have a match at the weekend so they need more of the pitch,” we were told.

There were confused glances as our male classmates ran by us, taking up the space we had just occupied. The wide patterns that our coaches had laid out for us were reduced in size as our half of the pitch suddenly became a third. Suddenly, the dots of red and blue and yellow that marked our running path started disappearing. That evening, multi-coloured cones littered the grass and there was that familiar nervous anticipation of knowing you were about to be put through your paces. Winning championships at various age levels and learning what it means to be a part of something, events that you still talk about with friends no matter how much time passes. I was never particularly talented at sport but some of my favourite memories were formed on that grass. It was an evening like any other one I had spent on my local GAA pitch. I remember the first time I was shown that my participation in sport meant less than that of my male counterparts.

Pucked over