Mairead Cogan grew up as the youngest of six children on a farm in the Curlew Mountains near Boyle. She was always outside. In the fields, in her father’s garage, under a tractor. Her mother stood at the back door shouting in, and Mairead kept not coming.

She went on to play ladies GAA, break her leg and ankle, discover coaching, and found her own fitness and lifestyle business. And in 2022 and again in 2024, she flew to Africa and came home changed.

She joined Carlo on Voices of Boyle for a conversation that starts in the Curlew Mountains.

A Childhood on the Curlew Mountains

The farm had 10 to 15 cattle, a square baler that was rare in the area, and neighbours who came without being asked. Mairead describes growing up at a time when summers were actual summers, when the hay could be saved in the sun, and when every family on the hillside helped every other family bring in the harvest.

She also describes, with great vividness, the system for fetching neighbours in an emergency. The house had no phone for most of her childhood. The N4 was too dangerous to run along alone. So when a cow was calving and help was needed, Mairead was sent across the fields, jumping ditches and falling into drains, to run to Thomas Kennedy or Johnny Battles or Jody Higgins and bring them back. She would arrive at the door completely out of breath and in a panic. The neighbour would come.

“Life was a lot simpler then,” she told Carlo. “And we seemed to have a lot more time, even though we were working.”

Her father was also a mechanic with a garage beside the house. Mairead spent her evenings there as much as in the fields. She learned to drive on the farm: a Massey Ferguson 35, put into first gear in low gear by her father or brothers, crawling through a field at five miles an hour while she was completely certain she was flying.

GAA and the Injury That Changed Everything

Sport was always central to Mairead’s life. She grew up going to her brothers’ matches, standing behind the goals kicking the ball back to the players. She played ladies football through secondary school and joined Ballinameen GAA, then Geevagh GAA after meeting her husband Dermot.

In 2019, playing a match with Geevagh, she broke her leg and ankle. The bone healed. She has a pin through her ankle and a plate in her leg. But when she went back to the pitch, she was not the same player.

Her surgeon had told her, after the operation, that she would never play football again. Those words rang in her head every time she stepped back onto the grass.

“When I went back to the pitch after the injury, I just was not the same player. Those words from the surgeon. They stayed with me.”

Coaching and Founding Supple Fitness

Rather than step away from the game entirely, Mairead moved to the sideline. She started coaching with Geevagh ladies, and something shifted.

She realised that what she had always loved about sport was not purely the physical side. It was the human side: helping a team through a Championship final defeat, building players back up, navigating the personality clashes that any group will inevitably have. The fitness and the skills were part of it, but the people were the point.

That realisation led directly to Supple Fitness, a business name that plays on her maiden name, Supple. She got qualified, did courses in person and online, and started building a client base through family, close friends, and her GAA club. She coaches in-person and online, and her approach is what she describes as looking at the whole person: not just handing over a programme but asking about sleep, routine, mental load, time, and what kind of support the person in front of her actually needs.

“A lot of the time what somebody is really looking for is just accountability,” she said. “Somebody to keep them to it.”

Kenya 2022: Ten Thousand Euro and a Million Trees

The idea came from her brother-in-law Ollie, who went to Zambia in 2018 and came home with photographs and stories that stayed with Mairead. She wanted to go and see it herself.

She was due to travel in 2019. Covid pushed everything to 2022, when she went to Kenya with Plant the Planet Games, organised by Self Help Africa in partnership with Warriors for Humanity, founded by Galway man Alan Cairns. Each participant raised a minimum of ten thousand euro to fund the planting of fruit trees for food and income, and shelter trees for families and animals.

The trip included visiting farms and homesteads: one cow, one goat, a walk of several kilometres for clean water. Homes built from timber and clay with open fires inside and no chimneys, so every meal cooked filled the house with smoke. The group worked with local families to install chimneys, teaching as they went so the skill could be passed on.

“You can see stuff on television and you don’t really believe it is real,” Mairead said. “When you see it with your own eyes, it is a different thing entirely.”

“I never seen happier people in all my life. When you think of how little they have, they are so, so happy. They really show you how to live.”

Uganda 2025: Magda

At the end of 2025, Mairead went again. This time to Uganda, visiting schools, teaching sport and GAA to children who had walked ten kilometres barefoot to class that morning and would walk ten back that evening.

At a school called Simba Wolfhounds, she met Magda.

Magda was four years old. She came up to Mairead and attached herself to her arm. She wanted to be lifted and carried. She sat on Mairead’s back and they ran around playing horses. She pulled at Mairead to be picked up again every time she was put down.

The group returned to the school the second day. Magda saw Mairead arrive and came running straight to her arms.

Leaving was heartbreaking. Mairead knew the chances of ever seeing her again were slim.

“She just stayed with me for the whole day,” Mairead said. “That just shows the love and care that these children want. And having to say goodbye. It literally broke my heart.”

Landing at Dublin Airport at Christmas

Both trips ended at Christmas time. Both times, stepping back into an Irish airport lit up with decorations, busy with talk of presents and turkeys, Mairead found herself unable to immediately reconnect with it.

She is not sentimental about this. She understands that Christmas is important and that giving gifts is a way of showing love. But the rawness of what she had just seen made the distance between that world and this one feel very large.

She turned off the tap while brushing her teeth. She shortened her showers. Small adjustments that have stayed with her since.

“Simple little things that we take for granted,” she said. “Just turn on the tap and you get your water. Out there, they might walk a couple of kilometres for it.”

The Path Forward

Mairead still lives on a farm in Geevagh with Dermot. She is still outdoors most of the time. She is still coaching. She has not ruled out a third trip to Africa.

If the younger version of herself, running across the Curlew Mountains to fetch a neighbour, could see her now, Mairead says she thinks that girl would nod. The outdoor life, the hands-on work, the community, the helping people along. None of it has really changed. It has just taken different shapes.

“I think I have landed on my feet,” she said. “It is exactly how I would have seen her.”

Key Timestamps
00:00 — Welcome from Carlo
00:21 — Growing up as the youngest of six on a farm in the Curlew Mountains
01:24 — How farm life shaped hard work and responsibility
02:15 — I loved it: always outside, in the fields, in the garage under the tractor
03:12 — Saving hay in the summer, the square baler, the community coming to help
04:25 — Running across fields to get neighbours when a cow was calving, no phone, no car
07:25 — Earliest memory: pulling a calf with the neighbours and flying back into the shed door
08:35 — Learning to drive on a Massey Ferguson 35 at five miles an hour
09:25 — The family farm continuing: dad, two brothers, nieces and nephews
10:27 — Farming as an income today compared to when she was growing up
11:00 — School in Boyle, enjoying it more in hindsight
13:11 — GAA: always at her brothers’ matches, joining Ballinameen when Boyle had no ladies team
14:43 — Breaking her leg and ankle playing football in 2019
15:29 — The mental challenge: the surgeon said she would never play again
18:33 — Moving to coaching: discovering what she really loved about sport
20:45 — Founding Supple Fitness: fitness, lifestyle, mindset and accountability
22:26 — Growing the business online and the role of social media
23:10 — Early fears and building confidence as a new business owner
25:50 — Finding first clients: family, the GAA club, building from there
28:34 — Her approach: the whole person, not just a programme
30:37 — Kenya 2022: Plant the Planet Games, raising 10,000 euro, planting trees
32:40 — Visiting farms and homesteads in Kenya, installing chimneys
34:21 — The hardest part: landing in Dublin at Christmas after Kenya
35:32 — Uganda 2024: schools, sport, GAA, music and song
36:54 — The happiest people she had ever seen, with almost nothing
37:46 — Differences between the two trips
39:50 — Magda: the four-year-old girl in Uganda who clung to Mairead all day
42:04 — The heartbreak of saying goodbye
44:20 — What the trips changed about her daily habits
46:05 — COVID: slowing down and appreciating what matters
47:59 — Boyle in 2026: community spirit, vacant businesses, hopes for the younger generation
49:49 — Time capsule question: the Boyle Arts Festival
51:41 — Where to find Supple Fitness: Facebook and Instagram

Links and References

Supple Fitness: Facebook and Instagram @SuppleFitness

Plant the Planet Games — planttheplanetgames.com

Self Help Africa — selfhelpafrica.org

Guest Bio

Mairead Cogan (nee Supple) grew up as the youngest of six children on a farm in the Curlew Mountains near Boyle. She played ladies football with Ballinameen GAA and later Geevagh GAA, where she moved after meeting her husband Dermot. Following a serious leg and ankle injury in 2019 she moved into coaching, which led to the founding of Supple Fitness, her fitness, lifestyle and mindset coaching business. She coaches in-person and online, working with clients on sustainable habits, accountability and whole-person wellbeing. In 2022 she volunteered in Kenya and in 2025 in Uganda, both trips with Plant the Planet Games in partnership with Self Help Africa and Warriors for Humanity, raising over ten thousand euro each time to fund tree planting and community projects. She lives on a farm in Geevagh, Co. Sligo with her husband Dermot.