Shamrock Rovers’ time may - or may not - be nigh as Women’s Premier Division kicks off

It’s not that they were strangers to winning league titles, they’d already collected three before last season, but it’s doubtful that Peamount United savoured any as much as the one they secured in October with two games to spare. Karen Duggan, the Irish Times columnist who captained the club to that success, described it as the proudest achievement of her career.

The bulk of the preseason chat had, after all, been centred on Shamrock Rovers re-entering the League and using their financial clout to lure six of Peamount’s players and another six from reigning champions Shelbourne, as well as senior international Savannah McCarthy from Galway. So, with a squad of that depth and quality, there was a notion that Rovers would prove unstoppable.

That assumption, naturally, left Peamount and Shels peeved, but it wasn’t appreciated much by Rovers either, their manager Collie O’Neill arguing that with so many new faces, it would take time to build a team. “Maybe next year we’ll be there or thereabouts,” he said.

Well, “next year” starts on Saturday with the opening round of fixtures in the 2024 SSE Airtricity Premier Division season, so will Rovers be there (or thereabouts) this time around, having finished seven points behind Peamount and one adrift of Shels in the last campaign?

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You’d imagine so. The squad has been trimmed by a number of departures, among them Jess Gargan (to Shelbourne), Tiegan Ruddy (Bohemians) and Alannah McEvoy (Bohemians), but most of their 2023 recruits have been retained, with no influx of new faces. O’Neill has, then, a much more settled group to work with, so a serious title challenge will be expected.

But Peamount’s grip on that trophy won’t be easily loosened. Yes, they’ve lost Tara O’Hanlon to Manchester City, and their 3-0 defeat in the President’s Cup last weekend by Athlone won’t send them into the new campaign with a spring in their step. But they have a richly talented group of young players, among them Erin McLaughlin, Ellen Dolan, Freya Healy and Jess Fitzgerald, all of whom have received senior international call-ups, while holding on to last season’s League player of the year Sadhbh Doyle and strengthening by bringing in Erica Burke and Ciara Maher from Bohemians.

Shelbourne, whose quest for a three-in-a-row was halted by Peamount last season, are under new management, Eoin Wearen moving up from the club’s underage set-up to take over from Noel King. They’ve added some impressive quality to their squad, Gargan returning after her year with Rovers, while senior internationals Roma McLaughlin and Éabha O’Mahony have also been enlisted – McLaughlin after a spell playing in Denmark and O’Mahony after concluding her scholarship in the United States.

Athlone Town will, again, be an interesting watch. By the standards of their previous campaign, when they finished runners-up to Shelbourne, fifth was a disappointment last season – although results improved dramatically after Ciarán Kilduff’s appointment in June. And their year ended on a high when they beat Shels on penalties to win their first ever FAI Cup.

How they cope with the departure to FC Aarau in Switzerland of Dana Scheriff, the Premier Division’s top scorer last season, will be key.,New arrival Casey Howe, a Northern Ireland international, hopes to help fill the void. If they can start this campaign like they finished the last, when they won 11 of their final 13 games, then they’ll be in the mix.

Bohemians finished sixth in the league last time out in what proved to be a season of two distinctly differing halves – they won seven of their first 10 games, and just two of their last 10. It’s all change for the new campaign, Ken Kiernan leaving his role as assistant at Athlone to take over as manager, with the number of new player arrivals passing the double-digit mark, with Ruddy and McEvoy, who was called up to the Irish squad in Vera Pauw’s time, the most notable names. No more than Rovers last season, it will, most probably, take time for all the new blood to bed in, so it will be a journey into the unknown.

Galway United will attempt to build on a fine fourth-place finish last season, their squad bolstered by the addition of two Americans, forward Emily Kavanaugh and goalkeeper Kaylee Hammer, as well as Lucy Jayne Grant, who has arrived from Athlone.

Wexford Youths, who appointed Hugh Strong as manager in December (the last entry in his extensive coaching CV was his spell in charge of Shels’ under-19 men), are battling to get back to the glory days when they won four league titles in five seasons, between 2014 and 2018. There’s been no joy since, though, with last season’s seventh-place finish another disappointment. As befits their name, they will rely on a largely youthful squad.

Laura Heffernan, the only female manager in the Premier Division, will have a job on her hands too with a DLR Waves side that picked up just three wins from their 20 games last season, while Tommy Hewitt, the former Athlone manager, will work towards improving Sligo Rovers’ yield of just two victories.

Things can only get better for Cork City after they finished bottom of the table last season, no other club scoring fewer goals and none conceding more. Manager Danny Murphy is charged with improving matters, no little faith being put in new signing Orlaith O’Mahony, the Kildare native who arrives from Shamrock Rovers and is expected to bring some much-needed bite in midfield.

Perhaps the most intriguing story to follow this season will be that of Limerick’s Treaty United, who were taken over by a Canadian investment firm last October. And with that Ciara McCormack, who played for the club last season, became the league’s first female chief executive.

Eileen Gleeson has promised to keep a close eye on the league, in which she worked for so many years, and offer call-ups to players who excel in it. That’s an added incentive, then, for its brightest talents, knowing international opportunities await if they can catch the Republic of Ireland manager’s eye.

Another incentive is the increased prize money for this season’s League winners – it was €20,000 in 2021, it’s now up to €110,000. Small change in the wider world of football, but no small amount for these clubs.

Who will win the 2024 League? Well, we learned last season never to make assumptions. And that applies again. It should be a decidedly tasty battle, though.

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