Mayo footballer Saoirse Lally opens up about the day that saved her life

Anyone who has seen Saoirse Lally play would never think she had heart trouble. Her former mentor, Neil Chambers, quoted in these pages, once compared her to ex-Manchester United footballer Denis Irwin and tipped her to win Footballer of The Year one day.

An All-Star nominee at the age of 19, Mayo vice-captain at the age of 20, captain in 2024, the Westport warrior was, and remains, one of the country’s finest young defenders.

All her life, Saoirse Lally played the game with her heart firmly stitched into her sleeve. But something potentially fatal was holding her back.

One the second Saturday of last February, the entire Mayo senior ladies team went south to the Advanced Medical Services in Cork for a GPA-backed cardiac screening.

“I remember that morning we were all kind of saying ‘Why are we even here? We are all so fit and healthy. Nothing is ever going to come of this’,” Lally tells The Mayo News over coffee in Westport’s Wyatt Hotel.

DENIAL

Several calls came from the Advanced Medical Services over the coming days. She ignored them right up until the Wednesday.

“They basically just said we need you to go for further testing because something came up on your ECG,” continues Lally, who has no family history of heart disease.

“I was still in complete denial, didn’t think anything was wrong with me, I thought the test results were wrong. I wasn’t worried at all about it and then the next day I got another call from a clinic up in Dublin saying we’d advise that you go for a heart procedure, that you have a thing called preexcitation  syndrome. It turns our I had an extra pathway in my heart that made it go too quick and not enough blood was getting around my body.

“So that was the day when it all set in and it was a bit of a shock, not only to me but to my family and friends as well.” Pre-excitation syndrome has been linked to Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS), a condition which claims the lives of roughly 100 young people in Ireland each year. Regardless, Lally still togged for Mayo for the next two or three games.

“If that was someone else I’d say, ‘Yeah, they are crazy. They are absolutely mad’,” she says, looking back on her decision to play on. Three weeks after her diagnosis, Lally received a cardiac ablation.

“They basically just went up through my groin, burned off the extra pathway, I had to stay one night, got more ECGs done the next day and they all went really well, thank God,” she explains.

“Then it was a week or two or rest away from training and now I’m 100 percent; back training, back playing matches and everything. It was just by luck that I went that day to the cardiac screening. It saved my life basically.”

STRUGGLE

Life, and football itself, is so much better now for Saoirse Lally. For years, she had no idea there was anything wrong with her. Looking back, she never realised how much she struggled with her condition.

“Growing up I could never understand, no matter how much training I did I could never actually get fit. But now it all makes sense. It was stopping me from reaching the next level,” she offers.

“At trainings now or in a tough match I find it so much easier to breathe. Before, I really struggled with breathing. Once I started the warm-up, I found it hard to breathe. I felt my heart 24/7 all the time, but now I don’t feel it all the time anymore. But, to me, that was normal.”

Other athletes haven’t been as lucky as Saoirse Lally. On August 5, 2022, Tipperary was plunged into mourning when Dillon Quirke dropped dead in Semple Stadium at the age of 24 – yet another tragic case Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS).

A foundation which bears his name has given free cardiac screenings for over 1,200 young people and, ultimately, wants to see them made compulsory.

Italy introduced a law in 1982 mandating annual cardiac screening for individuals who participate in sports that require regular training and competition. It has led to an 89 percent drop in fatalities linked to SADS.

Lally, who attended the launch of The Dillon Quirke Foundation, says many players are reluctant to undertake cardiac screening – not for fear of what they might find, but for fear of being dropped.

“People shouldn’t be scared to think I can’t get cardiac screening because ‘If they find something wrong, I’m out forever basically’, because it’s not like that at all. You might only be out for a week or two and then you could be back again,” she says.

In any case, her teammates and managers have been more than accommodating since she took her first steps back to training.

“They are putting zero pressure on me to push myself at training. I can take a longer break between drills if I want or I can step out at any point,” she explains.

“For the first couple of trainings I was getting dizzy and things like that, but they just let me step out. There was no issue at all. A lot of players won’t get the cardiac screening because they feel their starting place could be gone when they come back or their place on the panel could be gone but I think management have a massive role there to play to kind of let players ease back into it.”

She couldn’t breathe properly for 22 years yet still became the best defender in Mayo. Just wait until you see her now. 

You can find out more about the work of the Dillon Quirke Foundation by visiting www.dillonquirkefoundation.com.

Watch Saoirse Lally talk about her diagnosis and what happened afterwards:

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Mayo News (@themayonews)