Carnacon’s flying doctor Doireann Hughes on Mayo, marathon running and returning home to Ireland

THERE’S very few hospital doctors that run eight kilometres to work, do a 12-hour shift, and then run home again.

That’s Carnacon’s Doireann Hughes for you: unassuming, easy-going and affable in person; unyielding, ruthless and utterly determined from the second she laces a pair of runners or football boots.

Her claim to fame is stitched into the green and red jerseys of Mayo and Carnacon.

Reared only a couple of hundred metres from the field where the green and red of Mayo was born, Hughes was still in primary school when she broke into the greatest Mayo club team of them all.

She travelled the country in the passenger seat of Cora Staunton’s car; first to Carnacon games before the wings of the GOAT carried her to Mayo games.

Together, they were part of three All-Ireland winning Carnacon teams and a Mayo team that reached the All-Ireland final in 2017.

The then-22-year-old was one of eight Carnacon players on the Mayo senior panel at the time.

One year later, they, along with club stalwart Michael McHale, selector Denise McDonagh, and four other players, left the panel after an acrimonious public spat with former manager, Peter Leahy.

Just one Carnacon player, Fiona McHale, has worn the Mayo senior jersey since.

While Doireann Hughes may have left the green and red of Mayo behind, the green and red of Carnacon always remained close to her heart.

Indeed, not even the Irish Sea could keep her from togging with the six-time All-Ireland winners.

After completing a degree in biomedical science, Hughes took a year out before deciding on a career in medicine – a move that was inspired by her mother, Christine, who worked as a public health nurse.

“I just said in my mind that I always wanted to do a bit more research and stuff. But then as time went on I was more seeking to be with people,” Hughes tells The Mayo News.

“I was always inspired by my mum’s relationship with her patients and her colleagues with their patients. I thought maybe it was a career that I would like for myself.”

The plan, initially, was to study in Limerick. Instead, the benefits of fee-free study in pre-Brexit Scotland outweighed the costs of staying abhaile.

All going well, she’ll be back in Ireland on a full-time basis from August.

But for four years, Carnacon had its very own ‘flying doctor’, with Hughes regularly travelling over and back for club championship games.

One particular journey in 2020 took eight hours - just to get out of Scotland.

“We had the county final but I was on placement in Inverness. It was a four-hour drive to the main airport to get home and it was at the height of Covid and we were sketchy. We thought it would be best if I drove down to the port, which is like a good eight-hour drive from Inverness, to get the ferry home so I wouldn’t be in contact with a lot of people and avoid Covid as much as possible. I landed in Belfast, drove home and played the game.”

And back again. And again, and again...like The Highwaymen.

That continued right up until last year, when the newly qualified doctor’s working hours became too restrictive to facilitate week-on-week trips home for championship games.

The flying doctor was far from idle though.

What mileage she didn’t clock up with Carnacon, she quickly made up for on the roads of Scotland.

Standing in her blue scrubs outside Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary, Hughes excuses herself to take a bite of a sandwich before telling us how her new marathon obsession got started.

“It was just after my medical school finals and my friend was going to run the Dublin City Marathon,” she begins.

“She was just interested to see if I would do it with her. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I will’. The whole event was just so absorbing. I just really enjoyed doing the long runs through the marathons and I feel like I could get into a nice flow with them kind of things.”

It wasn’t to be her last marathon either, as her Instagram feed will tell you.

_{Doireann Hughes pictured running the London City Marathon}

Hardly surprising that a middle-eight footballer who could run all day would manage the transition from boots and grass to runners and tarmac so easily.

“I think when you have the mindset of being in sport before you can very much transfer it to another sport. But also looking at, say, the likes of players like Fiona McHale, Cora, Martha (Carter) and Marie (Corbett) and players that I’d have played with in Mayo and seen their mindset; their drive is always something that you can feed off and ltranslate and try appreciate doing it in other sports yourself,” says Hughes.

One has to be cut from the cloth of champions to juggle marathon training with twelve-hour hospital shifts at literally any hour of the week.

“I think they provide such inspiration that it’s easy to bring that from other aspects of their life, not just to have it in football and other realms.”

Doireann Hughes is living proof of that. 

Doireann Hughes on...

Playing for Mayo again

I’ll see how my football is going and what I plan on doing with various marathons and stuff in the next year. This year has been really busy in terms of marathons and work and giving my body the best kind of rest. I don’t know if I would do Mayo. It would be definitely something I would consider but definitely can’t wait to start playing again with the club.

The 2018 Mayo walk-out

I think it was fair to say that the situation had tainted people. It was unfair that younger players weren’t prioritised. There was a lot of girls there that had loads of years to keep playing football but I think they were just kind of forgotten about, which was really sad at the time... they had many years to give. I think it was just the management of the whole situation that wasn’t great.