![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/5056643_9_articleinline_Jacqui_Hurley_childhood_photo.jpg\" "\\"")
Jacqui Hurley with her mother M\u00e1ir\u00e9ad, sister Tr\u00edona and brother Se\u00e1n outside Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, in 1990.<\/p>\nJacqui Hurley is grateful to her parents for opening her eyes to the world and all its opportunities. In the recessionary 1980s’ Ireland, Dave and M\u00e1ir\u00e9ad Hurley packed up their lives in Cork and moved to the other side of the globe with their three young children.<\/p>\n
\u201cMam was a nurse and Dad was an electrician and they\u2019d been offered jobs in Australia,\u201d says the RT\u00c9 sports broadcaster and TV presenter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Mam had never even been on a plane and they had three kids under four. But they wanted a better life. Their plan was to stay in Australia for a few years. They loved it so much we stayed for seven.\n <\/p>\n
Her earliest memory is of the goodbyes at the airport. She was only three and remembers feeling \u201cupset and sad but excited too. Everyone was hugging us and telling us they wouldn\u2019t see us for years, but we kids were delighted at the thought of flying in a plane.\u201d<\/p>\n
The life that awaited them in Australia was a happy one. Hurley says her parents \u201cran one of those houses where the door was always open, and people constantly dropped by\u201d.<\/p>\n
Both Hurley\u2019s parents played and watched a lot of sports and their children followed their example. \u201cIt was a sociable thing,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d play as a family and we\u2019d play with other kids. I always found sports a great way of making friends, and from a young age, I did athletics, played soccer and netball. We also had a massive green in our cul-de-sac where all the neighbourhood kids would play cricket.\u201d<\/p>\n
The young Hurley was also an outgoing and performative child. She says her parents have since told her how she \u201cused to cut holes in cardboard boxes and put them on my head so that I could pretend I was reading the sports news to everyone\u201d.<\/p>\n
As the middle child, she was close to both her siblings but says they would often squabble. \u201cTr\u00edona is 15 months older than me, and Se\u00e1n [who was killed in a car accident when he was 24] was two years younger. Any two of us together was fine but as soon as the third was thrown into the mix, there would be fights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jacqui Hurley with her mother M\u00e1ir\u00e9ad, sister Tr\u00edona and brother Se\u00e1n outside Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, in 1990.<\/p>\n
After seven years in Australia, Hurley\u2019s mother felt it was time to go home. \u201cShe was worried about her parents getting older and us not getting the chance to know them,\u201d says Hurley. \u201cSo we came back when I was 10.\u201d<\/p>\n
The children returned with Australian accents, which led to teasing at school. However, two things helped them to win the other children over.<\/p>\n
One was the Australian soap Home and Away, which Hurley says was \u201call the rage in 1990s Ireland\u201d. The storylines in Australia were six months ahead, so she and her siblings were \u201clike Mystic Meg \u2014 everyone came to us for the goss on what was going to happen with Shane and Angel\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sport was the other bridge. At her new primary school in Ballinhassig, Cork, Hurley played football, camogie, and basketball, and says, \u201csport once again helped me make friends\u201d.<\/p>\n
It also opened up other opportunities. Hurley played on the Irish basketball team and played camogie for Cork. Looking back, she recalls her teenage years as being \u201cbusy but happy, with sport being the main focus of every day\u201d.<\/p>\n
It was during those years she began to consider a career in sports journalism. For a while, her mother had been convinced she would become a concert pianist. \u201cShe\u2019d gone to a clairvoyant at some stage who had told her I\u2019d be a performer, and because I played piano then, that\u2019s what she thought I\u2019d be,\u201d says Hurley.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I had no interest in that. I ended up performing in a different way, a way that\u2019s closer to what I was doing as a little girl with that cardboard box on my head.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her career guidance teacher at school initially tried to dissuade her from her chosen career path, suggesting she apply for a PE teaching course instead. \u201cI\u2019m sure she only wanted the best for me as there weren\u2019t many women in sports journalism in those days,\u201d says Hurley. \u201cBut I was adamant and applied for media and English at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her parents supported her choice. She says they \u201cinstilled a belief in all of us that we could do whatever we wanted to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Tr\u00edona is a pilot with British Airways. Before he died, Se\u00e1n was about to become a semi-professional motorbike racer. I\u2019m a TV presenter. None of those is an easy career, but they always encouraged us.\n <\/p>\n
Hurley now sees her family\u2019s move to Australia as an example of her parents\u2019 commitment to providing their children with opportunities. \u201cThey upended their whole lives for us then and didn\u2019t stop there,\u201d she says. \u201cThey constantly spoke to us about the possibilities available to us and how we could make the most of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was that attitude that spurred Hurley onwards when she left home to go to college at the age of 18. She had \u201cmixed emotions because Tr\u00edona had gone to college in Cork and still lived at home. But the course I wanted to do wasn\u2019t available in Cork, so I had to go for it\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hurley now lives in Dublin with her husband Shane McMahon and their two children, Luke (12) and Lily (8). She tries to instil the same attitude in them that her parents instilled in her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is a much smaller place for them than it was for us when we went to Australia in the 1980s, but it\u2019s still as full of possibilities,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned a lust for living and an openness to the opportunities of the world from my parents and I\u2019d love my kids to have that too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacqui Hurley is grateful to her parents for opening her eyes to the world and all its opportunities.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[172173,71805,20645,71804,93,61,60,1786],"class_list":["post-421686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-my-childhood","tag-parenting-preschool","tag-parenting-school-children","tag-parenting-toddler","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}