By John Harrington

Little more than a year ago, Melanie Griffith’s life was changed forever.

The then 20-year old sports enthusiast suffered a serious accident in a motocross race that required her to be airlifted to the Mater Hospital and ultimately left her paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.

Most of us couldn’t bear to think how we would deal with that sort of adversity, but from the very start Griffith faced it courageously and resolved to make the best of her new life circumstances.

“It was quite challenging, but I just wanted to get stuck into it straight away,” she told GAA.ie.

“I just took the attitude that this is my life now and I have to deal with that and just to embrace it and try to get stronger in the chair and in my upper body and everything.

“I just got straight back into sport and that helped so much when I was playing sport. It helped me get so much stronger and take my mind off everything.

“It's been amazing. I didn't say no to any of the opportunities that were presented to me and it's gotten me this far so I'm really enjoying it.”

In the past year Griffith has played basketball, wheelchair hurling, wheelchair rugby league, murderball (another form of wheelchair basketball), and badminton, all to a very high level.

She was always a naturally sporty person, so those who know her best haven’t been surprised this has been the route she has taken in terms of dealing with her life-changing injuries, but even they have been taken aback by just how positive Griffith has been.

“Obviously my family were very upset after I had my accident and thought it was going to be really hard or whatever,” she says.

“But they've seen how I've embraced the challenge by getting involved in sport and they've been coming to watch and everything and are really happy for me.”

Last June, Griffith was part of the Irish team that travelled to Scotland for the Wheelchair Rugby League Celtic Cup and in her very first match against Wales scored a try with her first touch of the ball.

“That was amazing,” she says. “I kind of didn't really believe it until we got a jersey presentation and we sang the national anthem and everything. Until then I was kind of like, ah, this is nothing.

“But when that happened I was like, oh my god, we're actually representing Ireland here.

“I was so shook from doing it. It was such a surreal feeling and I was just so proud to be actually representing Ireland and singing the national anthem and having people watch you represent Ireland was just absolutely amazing."

Less than two months later, Griffith will now represent her country in another international sport, Floorball, as vice-captain of the International Wheelchair hurling squad that has travelled to Prague for the 2023 Prague Wheel Open Floorball International which takes place over the course of the next three days.

Camogie was one of the very few sports that Griffith didn’t play competitively before her accident last year, but since taking it up has proven herself to be a natural.

“I was playing basketball and Sean Bennett who's on the team with us, he's our goalie, he suggested that I'd give hurling a go and I said, yeah, sure why not. So I showed up to training and it all evolved from there.

“I love it now, it's really good. The matches have been excellent and everyone that plays it is so nice. That's been the same with every sport I've played really, and I've made so many friends through every competition that I've gone to so it's been really good.

“And every sport I've played has helped with my rehab and fitness and they've all overlapped really well.”

The Irish team will play teams from Czechia, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland in Prague and will be at something of a disadvantage because Floorball obviously differs in some ways to wheelchair hurling in terms of the the stick, ball, and some of the playing rules that are used.

Some of the 12-person Irish team have previous experience of playing the sport – the GAA previously sent a team to a tournament in the Netherlands back in 2019 – and other less experienced players like Griffith have shown a natural flair for Floorball since the team came together for training.

A natural competitor, she can’t wait to give it her all and believes the Irish team will make up for inexperience with enthusiasm.

“Yeah, really looking forward to it,” she says. “The lads that are going are all such good craic so we'll have great fun travelling together and staying in the hotel together.

“The rules of floorball are slightly different but my background in field hockey has definitely helped. At the start I was giving out to the others when we were training because I was getting it and they weren't!

“Obviously the teams we'll be playing will be a lot more experienced in playing actual floorball but we just come from the sport of hurling and it's not that much different and an Irish athlete can turn their hand at anything. We'll go there as the fighting Irish as always.”

When she returns from Prague, Griffith will turn her eyes back to her studies.

After her accident she took a year out from her degree in Microbiology in Trinity College, but will return soon to complete the remaining two years and plans to combine wheelchair basketball and hurling with her degree.

As you may have gathered by now, she’s not the sort of person to let her circumstances overwhelm her or to even ever feel sorry for herself.

“No, I'm not at all!”, she says. “I hate it! I hate feeling sorry for myself and I hate anyone else feeling sorry for me. From the start people were looking at me with sad eyes and I was, like, 'Stop doing that!' I just hate it.

“I actually think my family and friends shed more tears for me than I ever did myself, to be honest. They were like, 'Oh, Mel, we're so sad for you'. And I'd just say, 'I'm fine, it's okay!'”