Have boots, will travel

Gisborne’s Dara Mulrooney will be clocking up plenty of highway kilometres in the next two months, but it’s all in a good cause . . . football, and lots of it. Picture by Paul Rickard

Talk about doing the hard yards.

Dara Mulrooney has made Central Football’s Girls Youth National League squad and faces a weekly round trip of just under 800 kilometres to go to training in Palmerston North.

And that’s before weekend travel for games.

Not that she’s complaining.

It’s a big deal to make Central’s 19-member squad for a nationwide league of the best female footballers up to the age of 18. Mulrooney turns 18 on Saturday.

The Campion College left-sided midfielder or defender is the only Gisborne player in the squad and this is likely to be her last campaign as a Central Football rep for a few years at least . . . she plans to be at university in Auckland next year, studying law.

Dara Mulrooney, the daughter of Blake and Helen Mulrooney, was in Central Football teams at week-long age-group tournaments before the Covid-19 pandemic. The youth national league is a relatively new development, set up last year.

Each team will play nine games on a round-robin basis, and the top two teams will play a final to determine the champions. The first games will be played over the weekend of September 23 and 24, with the final round-robin games set for November 18 and 19.

Four of the teams are from Auckland, with the rest spread among the Central region, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

Mulrooney has her training travel sorted. She plans to drive to Napier, leave her car at the home of teammate Charlotte Cameron and travel the rest of the way by road with Charlotte and her mother for the Thursday training sessions . . . and back the same way.

She is not sure yet of the exact arrangements for the games. All of the team’s home fixtures will be in Palmerston North, which will probably mean more road trips.

She has yet to learn what the arrangements will be for away games – whether she goes to Palmerston North to travel with the team, or makes her own way to the away-match cities.

Looking ahead to next year, Mulrooney intends to keep playing football, and has already looked into the set-up at a few clubs.

She watched the final-round match of the women’s NRFL Premiership at Keith Hay Park, the home ground of Auckland United. They beat Western Springs 5-1 to claim the title, and Mulrooney was excited about the possibility of playing regularly at or close to that level.

Football is in the blood of the Mulrooney family.

Dara’s great grandfather, Bill Mulrooney, played for Eastern Union and Poverty Bay.

Her grandfather Mike played for Riverina and was Gisborne City chairman and is a longtime supporter of local football.

Her father Blake’s playing and coaching earned him life membership of Gisborne City and the gratitude of the players he coached at junior and senior levels in men’s and women’s football.

Her elder siblings Conner and Mollie both represented the district through the grades.

And so the next chapter begins.