Paul Fennessy

Updated at 15.20

ALANNAH MITCHELL announced her departure from Treaty United last month.

The 21-year-old’s news came as a big surprise.

She is near the top of the club’s list of all-time appearances, having lined out on 62 occasions since the women’s team was founded in 2020. 

But not many people knew what the centre-back was going through behind the scenes.

At just three years old, she was diagnosed with a rare condition.

Originally, she was thought to have juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Around the age of 17, the diagnosis was changed to psoriatic arthritis. 

Mayo Clinic describes the latter as “a disease that causes red patches of skin topped with silvery scales”. 

It can occur in any part of the body while joint pain, stiffness and swelling are the main symptoms.

The disease has no cure and is thought to be caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Very few people knew about the centre-back’s condition until recently. She preferred it that way, not wanting any “special treatment” or to be perceived as different.

Sometimes, Mitchell herself wasn’t sure about it — the youngster suffered what she thought was a shoulder injury last season only to eventually be told the pain was a consequence of arthritis flaring up.

“My meds weren’t keeping up with it and my arthritis was just moving places,” she recalls.

Mitchell says there was also an element of relief in finally being able to explain to people outside of her close circle what the problem was and the extent of this suffering.

“I would always have been in the starting 11. So it was weird for me to take a seat back as well and be on the bench with an injury for so long.”

The Limerick native sometimes gets frustrated by the misconceptions surrounding arthritis.

“Especially when you hear ‘not a lot of people’ my age would have arthritis. It’s viewed as an old person’s disease.

“People think you’re way more fragile, or they don’t think you can do as much, which isn’t necessarily true the whole time. When I’m good and my disease is controlled, I can just be like anyone else.”

Still, to get this far in the sport has been an impressive feat. Mitchell has represented Ireland at underage level, in addition to regularly playing in the Women’s Premier Division.

Yet last season, as her shoulder and other joints began to flare up, it became more challenging to meet the intense demands of playing in the top women’s league in the country.

She was constantly sick and on medication that suppresses your immune system.

While competing, she would often pick up a cough or cold, thereby making the situation worse.

She hated having to sit out training and often played through it, but ignoring these issues was becoming increasingly difficult.

A chat with former-Ireland-international-turned-Treaty-CEO Ciara McCormack made up her mind ultimately.

The club were planning on moving towards a more professional setup, and Mitchell felt her body would not be able to handle the extra work.

At the time she was barely managing twice a week — four days in addition to a gym session and a match was considered an impossible task.

“And I didn’t want to take up the space from one of the girls as well if I was to be injured the whole time,” she adds. “If I was to go back, I’d want to be 100%.”

But Mitchell agrees when put it to her that it was a big achievement playing as often as she did in the first place.

“A lot of people don’t realise even growing up, I was constantly in Crumlin and all the doctors were gobsmacked that not only was I playing sport for so long, but I was doing so many when I was growing up, I was always playing two or three sports on the go.”

Mitchell believes she has a much higher pain threshold than most people, as someone who has grown up with this affliction.

“I’m normally always in pain,” she says. “But when you grow up with it from three, your pain tolerance changes, and you get comfortable with the pain that you’re in every day.”

On the good days, she describes the pain as a “four or a five out of 10,” whereas flare-ups range between seven and 10.

It was her mother who originally suspected something was awry. She wasn’t walking right as a child, while knees and ankles would “completely swell”.

Consequently, Mitchell tended to crawl rather than walk and was regularly getting tests at the hospital amid initial fears that she was suffering from cystic fibrosis.

Arthritis is uncommon in youngsters but not as rare as people might imagine. According to the Centres for Disease and Control Prevention website, in the US alone, an estimated 220,000 children and teens were diagnosed between 2017 and 2021.

“There are loads of kids that do have it now. But there are way better medicines and stuff that can help you keep everything under control and better manage yourself.

“Taking injections every week wasn’t fun, especially for a 12-year-old girl. But they are what help and it allowed me to continue to play at the level I was at for so long.”

What also makes the disease a challenge to deal with is how unpredictable it is. 

“Generally, it affects my hands the most,” she says. “And it’s hard when I’m training to be a physio. So if I’m on placement, when you’re doing a lot more than you normally would, it’s when I typically see my flare-ups now.

“My hands swell, all my joints and my fingers swell, and then my psoriasis starts to get worse. So my rashes and stuff would all appear. It’s hard to even move some days.”

As awful as it is to experience, Mitchell believes the arthritis has afforded her a level of resilience that is rare for people her age.

“Even at the sporting fields, I always felt even if I was in pain, most of the days I still would go and sometimes you do feel better after doing it.”

For Mitchell, sport also served as a form of escape — a place where she could temporarily forget about her illness and the relentless doctors’ appointments it necessitated.

“You could just be yourself and no one knew about what was going on either, which was nice,” she says.

There were, of course, times when a swollen knee or troublesome shoulder significantly impacted her on-field displays. The constant running and going into tackles took more of a physical toll than it would on other players.

She didn’t train differently from others on the team but took care when it came to recovery, and felt she needed to do more than anyone else.

Paraffin wax — used to provide pain relief to sore joints and muscles — would be applied to her fingers while she would be “constantly in hot and cold water”.

There was a nagging sense of guilt on the days she had to withdraw from the starting XI and would usually warm up either way before games in the hopes that it would make her feel better.

“It was really hard for me sometimes to pull a coach and say: ‘Today isn’t one of my best days.’

“You don’t want to let anyone down either, especially to deal with people looking at you and saying: ‘Oh, it’s only a swollen knee.’”

There is no end date in sight, yet Mitchell is hopeful she will eventually make a full recovery. She was in remission for a couple of years only to suffer another major flare-up.

While “stepping away” for now, Mitchell remains optimistic she will play for Treaty again soon and is indeed still lining out with the University of Limerick, given the less rigorous demands of their schedule.

Mitchell, who is on an Elite Sports Scholarship, is due to graduate this summer with a BSc in Physiotherapy and has offered to put her degree to good use by helping out with Treaty in the role of physio.

She encourages fellow sufferers not to feel guilty about the condition and to prioritise their health rather than “worrying about what everyone else is going to think of you”.

Mitchell similarly wants to be seen as a role model for others and feels her story is inspiring as opposed to sad.

“Although it was a tough decision for me to make, I’m just really grateful that I could play to begin with and that I got as many years as I did,” she says. “There are people out there who aren’t that lucky and who are in far worse situations than me who might not be able to play what they want to play at all.”