AMBER BARRETT’S GOAL against Scotland will forever be enshrined but that didn’t mean it could be pawned for easy credit.
Barrett’s goal guaranteed the World Cup in a collective sense only, because her seat on the plane was no such guarantee. The World Cup lead-in saw Vera Pauw onboard Marissa Sheva to buttress her options up front, while Barrett endured a wretched season at club level. Turbine Potsdam finished bottom of the Bundesliga, with Barrett missing a chunk of games through injury and unhelpfully deployed at right-back in others.
Hence Barrett arrived into the friendly game with Zambia with a point to prove. She duly made it, scoring twice in a 3-2 win. Pauw named her World Cup squad six days later, and didn’t drop a single hint as to her selection ahead of time.
Barrett’s parents were back in Donegal, but more accurately on tenterhooks. Barrett told her Mum that the squad would be named at 3pm.
3.30pm came and no word had reached Donegal.
Barrett got a text from her Mum.
Have you heard anything yet?
Barrett said she hadn’t.
That’s not good.
Jesus, don’t tell me that!
A few minutes later Barrett was called into a meeting and got the news to vindicate her parents’ day of torture.
“I called Mum. Mum and Dad were together, and my younger brother was there too”, smiles Barrett. “Mum was up the walls about it. It was brilliant. Mum and Dad have sacrificed so much for me, drove me halfway around the world to give me the opportunity to go to training. I am very grateful for it. Mum was very emotional. Making my very parents proud is something I’ll never tire of doing.”
But surely Pauw couldn’t have omitted the player who scored The Goal?
“It was easy for people to say to me, ‘Oh, sure you got us here so you are going to be going’”, replies Barrett. “That’s not how football works. And I also didn’t want to go based on one moment. I wanted to go because I have been good enough to this point.”
That Barrett phoned home the moment she knew she was going to Australia was as unsurprising as it was fitting, as the narrative threads of this World Cup campaign have been weaved around the ties that bind. Ireland’s World Cup is the coalescing of 23 different family stories, all of whom made sacrifices and offered support in service of a dream without a prior vocabulary. There are so many of these stories – Lily Agg’s mother rang a London boys’ team and defied their scepticism to ensure they would allow Lily to play; Megan Connolly’s father literally set up a girls team at College Corinthians in Cork and so she would have somewhere to play – and Barrett’s parents weaved their way around Donegal roads to bring her to training and to matches, and if there is a legacy from this World Cup, says Barrett, is that the parents of the next football-obsessed girl in Donegal won’t have quite so long to travel.
“I played with Lagan Harps which was 35/40 minutes up the road, bar that you had to go over to Inishowen, which was another hour away”, says Barrett. “It was just really difficult. We were able to play with boys for a long time – I loved playing with boys – but when the rules changed it made it more difficult for girls to get involved. It has improved since. We are still not where we need to be, but we are a lot further down the line now than we were then.
“Even my club team where I only had access to playing with boys, they now have girls teams at underage and senior level. That’s a massive thing, and something I am very proud of. If it’s even one more club in an area, then that is progress.”
Barrett has already guaranteed that Ireland’s qualification will be forever remembered in Donegal. The Creeslough tragedy happened days before the play-off against Scotland, in which 10 people lost their lives in an explosion at a petrol station. The Irish team wore black armbands in tribute and Barrett dedicated her goal to the victims of the tragedy, elucidating her links to the village after the game.
“That whole week building up to that game was very challenging for me personally”, she says. “I had such a huge connection with Creeslough. I spent my whole life in Creeslough with my grandparents. You build relationships with people in the area. When my Granda would bring me down to the shop, people would say, ‘Is the the runner, the footballer?’ It was the same with my brother. ‘Oh, is this the good footballer?’
“It was unbelievable for the team and for Ireland and for me, but 10 people lost their lives days earlier and it’s a place so close to my heart that I couldn’t not think about it in that moment.
“Family members directly affected by it have all said the same: you have lifted our town. That is something we have to be proud of. It was a really difficult few days for us. I have no doubt that what happened on Friday, we had those 10 angels in the sky got us over the line on Tuesday.
“It’s how Donegal people are. It’s how Creeslough people are. It’s very community based. The people at home will bring you down to earth. As Mum says, I was the one running mad up around Letterkenny Shopping Centre when I was younger. You’re still that little girl at heart. For me.”