Meet the lawyer who opens the batting for Ireland

Ireland’s opening batter Cecelia Joyce offers proof that it’s possible to have a high-flying legal career combined with playing sport at international level.

An associate with A&L Goodbody in Dublin, Cecelia (34) has spent more than half her life on the Irish women’s cricket team and got her 100th cap in 2016.

From a high-achieving sporting family in Bray, she was first called up to the Irish squad at the age of 15 as a leg-spin bowler, with her first cap at 17

But it’s getting harder to balance sporting and professional life. Match commitments are growing as Irish cricket develops. It takes work to maintain rankings.

“When I started playing, it was a maximum of three Ireland matches a year. We’re now the only team in the top ten global rankings that is not professional,” Cecelia explains.

“We get some compensation for loss of earnings, depending on whether Cricket Ireland has the money, but it’s not something we have agreed with them,” she says.

“There is a sporting penalty. If you spend so much time playing sport, you necessarily take longer to do other things in your career. It took me longer to do exams and get qualified.”

In the groove

The training commitment is huge, with two strength-and-conditioning gym sessions a week in DCU, as well as a session ‘grooving’ her batting skills.

As well as opening the batting for Ireland, Cecelia fields on the boundary, reading the ball off the bat and anticipating its run.

Cecelia is the youngest (with her twin Isobel) in a family of nine, and her five older brothers all play. Ed Joyce is a professional cricketer, best known as the Ireland batsman who played for two different countries in successive World Cups. Ed switched to England for the 2007 World Cup, but returned to play for Ireland in the 2011 tournament.

Twin sister Isobel is a professional cricketer in Tasmania and a former captain of the Irish team who once ranked number three in the world. By contrast, eldest sister Dr Helen Joyce is the finance editor at The Economist.

The family’s love of cricket stemmed from father James, an actuary brought up in Dublin’s Liberties, who developed a love of the game in his middle years and brought his children to play and watch club matches at Merrion Cricket Club in Dublin 4.

Family game

“With cricket in this country, the people who are the most interested and involved are the ones whose families are involved.

Cricket is a very time-consuming sport, and you are brought up thinking it’s acceptable to spend your whole weekend at cricket,” Cecelia explains.

She believes that cricket has an image problem, and she has been subjected to snide comments in the past. “The same people slagging us for playing an ‘English sport’ are playing soccer and rugby!” Cecelia points out.

“Cricket did lose out a huge amount when the GAA ‘foreign game’ ban came in. There used be multiple cricket clubs in the Phoenix Park, and most of them fell away – to only two now,” she says.

But the game is rising in popularity, with new clubs springing up throughout the country, often driven by immigrants who love the game. The Merrion Cricket Club pro is from India this year, Cecelia says.

She feels very strongly about the pressure on young girls to focus on exams, to the detriment of participating in team sports: “To focus solely on exams is so counter-productive for life skills. If you can’t study and continue to have a life, how are you going to work and have relationship, or work and have a child?” she asks.

“Exercise increases brain power and memory. It’s good for self esteem, for positive body image, for integration, teamwork and general life skills.

“I’d rather someone lost 50 Leaving Cert points and continued to have a life because, ultimately, that’s what we’re here for. And you get so much joy from sport.”

Now that she’s in the workplace, Cecelia observes higher stress levels in perfectionists who feel that they should be able to ‘do everything’.

“I think I can manage my stress better – which, for women in my demographic, is a big problem.”

Trinity pink

Cecelia studied history at Trinity, where she captained both cricket and hockey teams, and is a Trinity ‘pink’ – the highest honour the college awards to its athletes.

She feels strongly that the only way forward for the Irish women’s cricket team is to go professional, or at least semi-pro, since the demands in terms of both preparation and recovery time are so onerous.

“It is very hard to win against teams that are better prepared. A lot has to go right for us to win. People love the underdog story, but I would prefer to be an underdog that was given the same opportunity to prepare,” she says. “Sport is all about repeatable skill. It’s about the percentages. How often can you execute your skill under pressure, at the right time?”

She believes that women’s sport must get more support in order for the standard to improve, which will, in turn, draw bigger crowds to games.

At A&L Goodbody, Cecelia works in commercial litigation, where Ireland hockey cap Mitch Darling is a team colleague.

“Everybody who is a solicitor knows that you work for however long the job takes. I have worked overnight before. To then turn up for a match or training and give it your all – it’s just not possible.”

Different kind of hard

She accepts that being a fulltime athlete is “a different kind of hard”. But she questions the romantic notion of women’s sport as better because it’s ‘purer’.

“It doesn’t matter how much you love the game if you can’t make it to training or can’t pay your bills. Ten years ago, in terms of work/life balance, it was much easier – there was one tour a year,” she says.

That balance changed when Cecelia entered the solicitors’ profession in 2011 as a trainee at Arthur Cox. And, in recent years, the number of fixtures has gone up exponentially.

“I make some sacrifices, I don’t go on holidays. But with the demands being put on the Irish team, it’s just not sustainable. We have 50 days of cricket during work days this year, or 85 days including weekends, when availability is expected,” she points out.

The huge attrition in female participation in team sports is a particular bugbear of Cecelia, as is the poor level of coverage in the media.

“Every day I look at the newspapers and I see only men’s sport covered, even in papers like The Guardian that talk a lot about equality. It’s incredible to me that I can open The Irish Times and four of six articles are about men’s rugby. Put a woman on there!” she says.

“People read what gets covered. Children’s favourite athletes are the ones they see. If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. I see the betterment of women in sport as a corollary of the betterment of women in society. The more respect that women get in all areas, the better it is for everyone.”

As if she weren’t busy enough, Cecelia is also vice-president of the newly founded Irish Cricketers’ Association, which represents all those playing for Ireland in terms of welfare and contract negotiation.

And as a lawyer, Cecelia has some sage counsel: “My advice is not to get in a fight, but if you do, get good advice.”