‘I gave rugby 100 per cent and it became toxic’

Judy Bobbett loves the Kings of Leon. She loves the kind of musical magic the American foursome weave, mingling words and sound to create great art. She's particularly found of their song Revelry - and when you look at the lyrics it's perhaps not all that surprising. Like all great lyrics they relate to people's lives.

"Gonna run baby run like a stream down a mountainside/With the wind at my back I won't ever even bat an eye/Just know it was you all along who had a hold of my heart/ But the demon in me was the best of friends from the start," goes one verse.

"And I told myself for the way you go, it rained so hard it felt like snow/Everything came tumbling down on me/In the back of the woods in the dark of the night/ Palest of the old moonlight/ Everything just felt so incomplete" goes another.

While Judy is only 23 she knows something about battling with demons. She can relate to things "tumbling down" around her. She knows something about thinking things through "the dark of the night." She might be very young but she has endured her own long night of the soul. She is lucky too, she knows that. She has emerged the other side; to a brighter dawn, a new day, a fresh start.

The young Ashbourne woman has moved away from international rugby even though from the outside looking in she appeared to be in her natural sporting environments. Instead she has turned to boxing and found a kind of a home. A new home. The average boxing ring might not appear to be a safe haven, a place of refuge, a harbour, for many people but it has come to feel like that to Bobbett. A place where she finds a sporting fulfilment - and a powerful sense of personal freedom.

Recently Bobbett - who is a student of Sports Management & Coaching at the Technological University of Dublin - won the Women's Heavyweight title at the IABA National Elite Boxing Championships at the National Stadium, defeating Shauna Kearney in the 81+ kg final. It was only her second bout but by winning she became part of a very select cohort of people. She joins Katie Taylor, for example, as a fighter who represented Ireland in a field sport yet also claimed an Elite boxing title. Taylor played soccer for Ireland. Bobbett did the same in rugby.

Now she is doing something she didn't often do when she played rugby; at least not in latter years. She looks forward to training. "When I took up boxing and started to take it seriously I said I'm not going to get dangerously obsessed so when I go training now I have a smile on my face. I go and have fun. To say that at one level you don't take your sport seriously might be controversial, but that's what works for me. I want to go far in boxing, 100 per cent, but I want to have fun. I think in rugby I missed that. I gave it 100 per cent and it became toxic."

She doesn't blame the IRFU, she doesn't put any blame on her former colleagues. It was just the way she felt herself.

ANXIETY

Judy Bobbett's story is as closely entwined with the game of rugby as the oval ball game in Ireland is associated with Lansdowne Road. She grew up playing with Ashbourne RFC her home club. Was very good at it too. Good enough to get selected for Ireland when she was still very young. Won three caps at senior level in the green jersey. She was a lock forward with sparkling future in the game - but there was another, unseen reality.

She was excellent goalkeeper in Gaelic football too and won an All-Ireland MFC with Meath but rugby was the game where she really excelled - her call up to the international stage confirming that.

To the spectators, the outsiders looking in it might have appeared like she was living the dreaming. Playing for Ireland in the Six Nations. Instead she was dying, often wracked by anxiety particularly in the weeks and days leading up to matches. Being around a large group of people was difficult. Very difficult.

"I struggled with anxiety when I played for Ireland but not necessarily in the games, I struggled with training, with being in a group. There were times coming up to when I got my first cap I used to leave training early because I got so anxious. One of the coaches would give me a phone call before training to help me deal with that anxiety and I can't thank her enough for everything she did for me. It was all getting too stressful. After training I would nearly be in tears because of the anxiety around the group situations, the pressures."

The time came when Judy said enough is enough. When she realised she couldn't keep on grappling with the anxiety, which often fed into a depression. The twin demons as the Kings of Leon might have referred to them.

"I kept that up for a good year while I was in the Irish set-up and at that point, that's when I had to call it a day but it wasn't like I woke up one day and said that's it. I had to chat to a lot of people before I closed that door and even a few weeks after I stepped away I was second guessing myself and I found that tough because, especially with Ireland, you are pretty much in training every single day. I met people every day but when I stepped away I did notice a lot of friendships fizzled out very quickly, stuff like that was very hard to take. Your routine was gone, in some ways my purpose was gone, my identity was gone as well.

"In any sport I'm a confident athlete. When I do something I would make sure I'm competent in that way. I was never anxious surrounding the possibility I might throw a bad pass or something like that but it didn't put me off. The anxiety as more around people, more around the environment. In any given training camp you could have 50 women, including coaches and you're around them for a weekend camp, three or four days. You go away, play a match, you could be around the guts of 40 or 50 people for a week, stuff like that I struggled with, staying around large groups. I never hated the rugby aspect, I hated what came with it."

LIBERATION

Entangled in all her feelings connected with rugby in recent years was her feelings surrounding the fact that she is gay. For a time that reality too caused her plenty of anguish especially before she came out. "My mum joked with me when I did come out, and this is a common joke, that everyone knows before you know. I was a tomboy growing up and it's funny I used to have posters of Ronaldo up on the wall in my room, I probably had a crush on him, which would probably insinuate that I was straight but I think it's more or less the other way around.

"I never really had a boyfriend or anything like that so it was more of a shock that it took me until I was 19 before I came out. My Mum said it could have been a bit sooner. Mums always know."

Bobbett found coming out to be liberating. She found the same sense of freedom when she started talking openly about her anxiety and depression. Expressing it all was, at first difficult but it got easier, a blessed freedom, although she did have some guilt at first about walking away from playing oval-ball game. She doesn't blame the IRFU, they did all they could. It just didn't work out.

Helped by her family (she has three brothers, one sister), her girlfriend Rebecca O'Brien and close pals, Judy has sought to move on from all that, sought to put it behind her, her sense of personal renewal helped by her new-found friend - boxing. She took i up in college and joined the Liberty Boxing Club in Bray. She wants to push on an be the best boxer she can be with her innate competitive edge fuelling her ambition.

She took up the sport that is governed by the Marquess of Queensberry rules for a laugh at first, just to see what it was like. She has come to love it. While there are those who might consider stepping into the ring nerve wrecking Bobbett finds it less so than a team sport.

She hasn't given up rugby either - at least not completely. She coaches the senior women’s team at Ashbourne and let's it be known that she is there for anyone who want to talk to her about their feelings.

Nobody is better qualified to talk about the demons inside our heads; how things can tumble down. The Kings of Leon expressed it well in Revelry.

A song Judy Bobbett loves - and with reason.

JUDY BOBBETT ON .....

COMING OUT AS A GAY WOMAN WHO PLAYS RUGBY

"The one thing about rugby, particularly in Ireland but probably in the world, any women's team you join the vast majority are welcoming, so open to the fact that you are gay so that was never a huge issue with me. To come to terms with that reality takes a bit of a struggle although I wouldn't say it was particularly hard for me, not in the rugby circle I was in. It's nearly more of a shock if you are straight, which is a common joke.

"I only came out at 19, Mum (Ashling) said it to me a year previously and I got frustrated, denied it, I got embarassed. I did give out to her for asking me that because I probably only came to realise all that was involved a year earlier so 12 months on from that I came out. Her asking me when I was 18 gave me a push to figure things out and 12 months later I just sent her a text one day pretty much saying I was gay. She texted me back saying 'I know.' She just said it to my Dad (Charles) and there were no shocks to be honest."

THE IMPORTANCE OF A GOOD SUPPORT SYSTEM

"I knew stepping away from high performance rugby would help my anxiety and depression but I knew I had to filter my energy into a new sport so boxing has helped me in that respect. Technically speaking it's a solo sport. That was my main worry at first, that I'm on my own, how will I deal with that.

"Now I'm 14 months into it and the thing boxing has highlighted for me is that you have to have a good club and you have to have good people around you. I have my circle of friends, which is much smaller than when I was in rugby which suits me. I have my girlfriend, my partner, Rebecca who I know about two years. I have my family, good parents, my support team, they all are the most important thing. Then I have my club in Bray, the second most important thing."

ADVICE TO PEOPLE AFFECTED BY ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION

"The standard one is to speak out. If I didn't speak out about it God knows what would have happened. It can be quite serious and there are definitely a lot of people who don't speak out. I held it in for so long because I felt embarrassed, you don't see a lot of female athletes talk about it. Now when I'm coaching in Ashbourne I have 20 to 30 players under me and they know at any given time if they want to chat with me I'm there. I encourage them to talk to me because I know what it's like."