SoccerMy Sporting Highlight

Sports Review 2023: Special day in Aviva Stadium showed how far women’s game has come

World Cup exposure has transformed the Republic of Ireland women’s team’s profile and it was heartening to see a crowd of 35,944 for their first full game at the national stadium

The Republic of Ireland team applaud the fans at the Aviva Stadium after the 3-0 victory over Northern Ireland in September. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho

Mary Hannigan's face
Mary Hannigan
Sat Dec 30 2023 - 06:00
Nations League: Republic of Ireland v Northern Ireland, September 23rd, Aviva Stadium

It was case of fake-ish news back in September when the Republic of Ireland’s game against Northern Ireland at the Aviva Stadium was billed as the first time the women’s national side had ever played at the ground.

It was only later, while having a natter with sportswriter Cliona Foley, that this “historic first” claim was called in to question – she insisted that she’d seen the women’s side play at Lansdowne Road 20-ish years before.

“You’re raving,” she was told, politely. But she wasn’t. A spot of Googling and there it was, Ireland’s women had indeed taken to the Lansdowne turf in May 1999.

The gas thing, though, about that appearance was that it was merely a 20-minute-a-side exhibition game against Northern Ireland, before the lads of North and south played a full 90 in what was dubbed the ‘Peace International’, a fundraising effort for the victims of the Omagh bombing the previous year.

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Granted, 1999 isn’t today nor yesterday, but it’s hardly a century ago, so that the team only got to exhibit themselves for 40 minutes, like it was a freak-show put on for the amusement of the spectators trickling in to the place (Joey Barton: “Well . . .”), said it all about the status of the women’s game back then.

Fast forward 24 years to a September afternoon in Dublin. It was enough to raise the heartiest of chuckles, not least the sight of a sea of Katie McCabe shirts winding their way towards the Aviva Stadium, the names of Denise O’Sullivan, Amber Barrett and Abbie Larkin well represented too on the backs of those jerseys.

Republic of Ireland fans making their way to the Aviva Stadium for the Nations League Group B1 game at the Aviva Stadium. Photograph: Evan Treacy/Inpho

Most of them were worn by young girls with cheeks painted green, white and gold, most of them not much more than knee-high. They were led by the hands of their accompanying grown-ups to what might well have been their first ever visit to the ground for the Irish women’s first ever official international at the ground.

And when McCabe and Co emerged for their warm-up ahead of the Nations League game, the same young girls, in the crowd of 35,944, greeted them with ear-splitting screams. It was a hoot.

It was the loveliest of days, a measure of how far World Cup qualification and all that television exposure, which is everything, has raised the profile of these players.

There’s a long way to travel yet, of course, the women’s league here, where the average attendance was just 308 last season, in desperate need of support. But that September day showed us the potential. It was a far cry from a 40-minute exhibition game back in the day.

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