Belfast boxer Cathy McAleer rolling with the punches during uncertain times

Then came an obstacle that not even a lifetime in combat sport could prepare you for. During McAleers’s preparations for another bout in Birmingham on 10 April, sport was thrust onto the backburner by Covid-19.

But perhaps for McAleer this is where decades of experience are at their most value. The Belfast fighter is more comfortable than most in unchartered waters, knowing there is a time to swim against the tide, and a time to ride the wave as best you can.

“It’s just another obstacle in my career,” says McAleer.

“I’ve been let down so many times, I think I’ve built up a resilience to it.

“I’ve been through so much that I just thought ‘if you don’t ride with this, you’re going to end up with no income, no fitness and you’ll lose your mind’.

“I had to roll with it, and thankfully it’s coming together.”

In the space of a few days, as the severity of the impending lockdown became increasingly apparent, McAleer realised that it was not only her training that would have to adapt.

As a personal trainer with a karate school and a beauty school, McAleer is entirely self-employed with a set of circumstances that left her ineligible for any of the government’s financial support packages.

“I came back home and was sitting in my house thinking ‘this is awful’, I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she says.

“I was a bit lost but I had to sit myself up and say ‘right, how am I going to get an income?’

“Thankfully I had a really good client base, so I spent four days building an app and a website, and now I’m constantly busy so my days go quickly.”