Niamh Mallon still feels the pull of playing for Down - and she says that not lining out in the black and amber doesn’t sit easy with her.

Now with the Galway camogie side - and working as a performance nutritionist for Pádraic Joyce’s Galway men’s football team - the draw of home and playing for Down is still there.

Mallon was part of the Galway side that lost last year’s All-Ireland camogie final to Cork, with her former Mourne team mate, Sorcha McCartan lining out for the Leesiders.

Read more: Gaelic football power rankings: Where do Ulster counties rate after the first two weeks of the new season?

Read more: Jack O’Connor issues David Clifford update as Kerry prepare for “tough” Donegal date

She traveled up and down the road to play for her county for a number of years, but found that it was no longer sustainable.

“It was definitely something I didn't take lightly at all and it’s still not something that sits very easy with me either to be honest,” says Portaferry woman Mallon, a daughter of Down hurling legend Martin, the 1997 Ulster Championship winning skipper.

“It was all I'd ever known. I'd been playing with Down since I was 15 years of age. I had an awful lot of friends and an awful lot of relationships built up. It wasn't easy at all.

“Just probably the logistics of it didn't line up any more. I commuted from 2018, for those two, two and a half years. It takes its toll on your body.

“It was probably a case of the time was right to make the move.”

Mallon, who works for nutrition company Orreco, is involved at the cutting edge with Galway men as Gaelic football enters a new phase.

It appears initially that with the game speeding up the demands on players have increased.

“Fuelling demands must go with that and that's absolutely something we've been looking at and something that we're making the players very aware of,” says Mallon.

“That their energy demands and particularly their carbohydrate demands are going to have to increase to align with the increasing demands of the game.

“Fuelling is a huge issue. To the general person, they'd probably think that's fairly naive but the demands that these guys are under are huge - the energy demands.

“As well as the physical demands are the mental demands. So you're just ensuring that they're fuelling correctly and appropriately. That's massively important. Once we have that stuff covered then we can go after the one-percenters.”

Mallon says “the big one” now is the goalkeeper position.

“The demands and the distance covered and the high speed running of the goalkeeper, with the change in the rules, is huge,” she continues.

“For example, a goalkeeper's carbohydrate loading protocol has changed dramatically from this time last year, just to meet the demands of what they're doing, in terms of workload to back up the numbers the GPS is showing.

“That's a key learning we've taken and something we've tried to address and implement in our squad.

“The middle eight and the three up and three back is changing it as well. You're just trying to make sure that everyone has enough fuel on board to get through games. That's really important.”

Sign up to our sports newsletter here and get the top stories direct to your inbox from Belfast Live's sports team.