If all had gone to plan, Ireland would now be gearing up for their first ever Olympic Hockey game as they prepared to take on South Africa in Tokyo this Saturday.
It should have been the culmination of an astounding two years for the Green Army, during which they stunned the hockey world by finishing runners-up at the 2018 World Cup in London and dramatically secured their place at the Olympics with a penalty shootout victory over Canada in Dublin.
Like the rest of the world, the Irish hockey team has instead had to adapt to a new reality of lockdowns, zoom meetings and training in isolation, but captain Katie Mullan is able to see the positives despite all the upheaval and still very much has her sights set on an Olympic medal.
Speaking to RTÉ Sport just ahead of her first small-group training session with her Irish team-mates in over four months, Mullan is not only finding positives, but believes that the enforced break has offered both her and her team some very important 'gifts'.
"It was obviously a big blow at the start because for four years we’ve been talking about 2020 and you kind of had your life planned around going to Tokyo this summer," she said.
"Initially it was a big shock and it was very difficult for a while but I suppose once the dust settled and we recognised that actually an extra two months is a gift for us.
"We only qualified in November for over first Olympics and we had some time off in the run-in to Christmas, so we only really had six months to prepare, which is not a huge amount of time. Whereas now it’ll be that six months plus an extra year so we’re trying just to view it like that.
"It gives us an extra year to play under our new coach Sean [Dancer] and really get used to his style of play, an extra year to study the opposition and an extra year to get in the best physical condition that we can.
"It’s an opportunity to close the gap between ourselves and the top two or three nations in the world. We have to view it like that and it’s just now trusting in our programme to take us through to do that in the next 12 months."
The other gift that Mullan mentions is a dramatic restructuring of the international hockey calendar.
The 2021 EuroHockey Championship was originally scheduled to take place in August of next year but with the postponement of the Olympic Games, the tournament has moved forward to June and offers the ideal preparation for the Ireland team as they build up to Tokyo.
"It’s excellent what they’ve done with the European Championships because it would have been very difficult to host a tournament like that post Olympics," said Mullan.
"The Europeans is probably the highest quality of all the continental games in hockey just because there’s so many top teams within European, so I think it’s a brilliant opportunity for all of those teams to go to the tournament and really perform at the top level so close to the Olympics.
"That’s a bit of a gift because traditionally in the year of a World Cup or the year of an Olympic Games, you wouldn’t get that kind of exposure to that high quality number of games is a short space of time. So it also takes the pressure off us in that time to arrange games and it’s a brilliant tool for selection purposes.
"Traditionally, across all nations there’s a bit of a lull in hockey after an Olympic Games so I don’t think the standard of the Europeans would have been where it needed to be."
The enforced break has allowed Mullan to look at some smaller details of her game and given her the opportunity to address a niggling hip injury, that she would not have otherwise been able to treat.
The Irish skipper has also been able to take her first extended break from hockey in just over 11 years and afforded her the chance to spend some real quality time with her family.
"I suppose I've always had a bit of a niggle in my hip and when the pandemic came along, it actually created an opportunity for me to really put a lot of attention on that and work through it," she said.
"I’ve been working really hard through lockdown and have had rehab in some form or another every single day. While it’s been tedious, I have reaped the rewards and I’m seeing improvements now.
"We’re heading back on the pitch with small group sessions so the real test of the hip will be this week.
"It’s been four months and since I was 15 there’s never been a break like this. Even at that, when I was 15 I was playing camogie and hockey so there wasn’t really time off.
"It’s been great for me with my family especially. I’ve never got to spend this much time with my family in such a close period of time and it’s really opened my eyes to what really matters.
When Ireland finally get their Olympic campaign under way, Mullan insists that they will be targeting a medal, and she is eager to see her side build on their World Cup success.
Despite being drawn in a testing group that includes the reigning Olympic champions, Great Britain, the silver medalists, the Netherlands, and bronze medal winners Germany, Mullan is confident that Ireland not only reach the knock-out stages but progress from there.
"Coming off the back of a silver medal at the World Cup we would be silly of not having the goal of winning a medal at the Olympics, I think we’d be undercooking ourselves if we aimed for anything less," she insisted.
"Obviously, the first step to that is to get ourselves to a quarter-final through the group stages so, the same as it was at the World Cup in London, it will be one game at a time and one step at a time, lining up our opposition each time to create a plan to beat them.
"I think, big-picture stuff, we have to try and back up what we did at the World Cup because we don’t want to be a one-hit wonder.
"We always said that when we go to an Olympic Games we want to do something special there - it’s not just enough to get there."
'Lidl Moves for 20x20' is Lidl Ireland's new exercise programme and microsite which was launched as part of their support of 20x20's 'No Proving. Just Moving.' initiative. 'Lidl Moves for 20x20’ has been created to encourage and motivate women of all ages, abilities and backgrounds to give themselves the gift of exercise and form a new and lasting exercise habit for the good of their physical and, more importantly, mental health. You can visit the new microsite here.
