Caroline O’Hanlon is captain of the Northern Irish national team and has 88 caps for her country to date. She competed at Glasgow 2014 and has played in several World Cups for her country.
It was really disappointing to lose 66-51 to Loughborough last weekend because we made a good start to the match, which is something we’d been focusing on.
But we made a few errors at critical times which swung the match towards them and, as we tried to push the game in the last quarter, they managed to get away from us.
At this level, you need to be ruthless and we just made too many mistakes to beat a team that is as good as Loughborough, but it’s really encouraging that we pushed the team who are top of the table so hard.
As a squad, we’re very confident we can match any team in the league.
Our match against Severn Stars on Monday is a big one. We’re above them in the league at the moment but they have a great line-up and so it’ll be another tough evening.
But if we play well and make sure we keep everything tight, we’re confident that can beat anyone and so we’re really looking forward to bouncing back after our defeat last weekend.
The team is progressing and as every week goes by, the team is getting better and better.
I personally am really hectic from week to week because I still live in Northern Ireland so I fly over for Sirens matches.
I’m a GP and so I have a pretty full-on schedule but I really wanted to be involved with Sirens because it’s such an exciting initiative. I’ve known many of the Scottish players for a number of years and I have a lot of admiration for them so signing for Sirens gave me a fantastic opportunity to play alongside them.
I’ve played in the Superleague previously when I was playing for Northumbria and the league is fantastic so I jumped at the chance to compete at this level again.
With the games coming thick and fast, everything’s non-stop for me and I don’t have a minute to sit down but I love it being like that.
I’m able to train with the Northern Irish netball squad a couple of times a week and I also play Gaelic football so that makes sure that my fitness levels never dip.
I know it’s unusual for an international athlete to play two sports simultaneously but I really think that playing Gaelic football helps my netball because it toughens me up.
Netball is becoming more and more physical so having played Gaelic football since I was a kid, I’m completely at ease with the increased contact in netball.
What I’m doing definitely seems to be working at the moment so I’m just hoping that continues throughout the season.
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