THE FOOTBALL PITCH in Kilnamanagh, the streets of Knocknaheeny and Cork, a green in Blessington.
From little acorns.
To the cusp of a World Cup.
Katie McCabe, Denise O’Sullivan and Louise Quinn are three of the Republic of Ireland women’s national team’s biggest stars. Should Vera Pauw’s side qualify for a first-ever major tournament after Tuesday night’s historic play-off against Scotland at Hampden Park, they’ll have played immeasurable parts.
McCabe captains the team, a world-class star at Arsenal. She’s a massive name in women’s football now, excelling on the game’s biggest stages.
It all started on one she made her own.
“I’d look out onto the football pitch here in Kilnamanagh, Katie was always out there playing,” Eamon Connaughton, the coach of her first team, tells The42.
McCabe was seven or eight when she first started playing for Kilnamanagh AFC, straight into 11-a-side in the Dublin District Schoolboys League [DDSL].
“In those days there was no ladies football or girls football so they played with the boys. She was always well able to get stuck in. Her stature was very good, she had a great pair of legs for playing football.
“We had two girls playing on the team at the time, herself and her pal Amy. When we went out to play games, the other team would be looking at each other going, ‘There’s girls on this team, they must be crap.’
“By the end of the game, they’d change their mind.”
An underage coach of Quinn’s, Vincent Balfe, tells similar stories.
Quinn, now captain of Birmingham City and set to earn her 99th Irish senior cap in Glasgow, was good friends with Balfe’s son, Derek, in school.
“We have a green outside our house here in a cul de sac and Louise was always out on that green,” he beams.
“She’d be knocking here on the door in the evening time to see was Derek coming out to play football.”
Their families were close, too, and by the summer of 1998, Quinn had followed her classmate to Blessington FC where the pair played on the same U9s team.
“Louise had no qualms whatsoever about playing with the boys” Balfe continues.
“There weren’t too many girls playing football back then with the boys teams. Quite often we’d turn up at a game, maybe an away match, they’d see Louise in the squad and you’d see a few smiles on the far sideline. She’d soon wipe those smiles off their faces!
“The teams got to know her very well. They knew bloody well they were going to be in for a hard time when they were up against Louise.”
O’Sullivan, meanwhile, mixed it with the boys on the street, and for Nufarm Athletic until she was 11, when she joined Wilton United. The midfield maestro is now one of the top players in the National Women’s Soccer League [NWSL] Stateside, plying her trade with North Carolina Courage and also closing in on a century of caps for her country.
“She was excellent,” Pat Bowdren smiles. “She was one of those players that you didn’t have to do too much for really. She was a natural. You get some of those…”
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Natural ability. Raw talent.
Striking from early days.
That was the case for McCabe and Quinn as well as O’Sullivan.
“You could see it from the start,” Connaughton nods. “She had this left foot, I actually always compared it to the way Liam Brady shielded the ball.
“She could shield the ball with her left foot, and had the strength to push the boys off. She had great power in her left foot, any time we had a free kick, she always took it.
“She had a little bit more than a lot of the boys that were playing as well. She’d never pull out of a tackle at all — and she never lost that!
“The control that she had; she never hurried, she always took her time and looked up and looked around. It was like an old head on young shoulders.
“It was a natural thing in her, it wasn’t something you had to teach her, it was a natural thing with her left foot and to play the game. I think it was always in her to go far in football — she had the brains, it was just instilled in her from the start.”
For McCabe’s Liam Brady similarities, there was resemblance in a young O’Sullivan with another Irish legend.
A certain Cork one who grew up playing in similar streets, not a million miles away.
“I always liken her to Roy Keane,” says Bowdren.
“She had the same kind of an engine and determination. Through playing on the streets, I think they both had a different insight into football.
“Denise was always good to play football and keep the ball on the ground if she could, look for passes and things like that. Technically, she was excellent, her engine was unreal, she just kept going. She was never an ounce of bother.”
The same applies for Quinn, who graduated from the local green — where James Nolan, the Irish football fan who died in Poland at Euro 2012, was also among the group — to Blessington FC.
“When Louise came along, she turned into a real sporting enthusiast,” Balfe remembers, also detailing her talents in athletics as a sprinter for local club Blessington Valley and Wicklow in the Community Games.
“It’s not just a pure fluke that she turned out the way she did, she was always at so many activities when she was young. It was obvious that she was going to turn into some sort of a sportsperson.
“But she was really into her football. She always had great potential. The girls game was really only taking off back then, so you could see that she would have a good chance of becoming really good.
“She was a real terrier. We actually used to play her in midfield at the time. It was only five a-side or seven a-side, small pitch and all that. She used to get great enjoyment out of her tackling skills out in the middle of the pitch. A real box-to-box player.
“She loved scoring goals as well, she was a great goal-scorer back then. She wouldn’t have been particularly tall when she was that age, she was quite small when she was younger but it was only when she got to about probably 10, 11 that she really took a stretch.”
Standing at 6ft now and one of the most solid, experienced defenders around, it’s amazing too look back through the years and hear the differences.
Most of Quinn’s goals now are trademark headers, but Balfe assures they were with the boot back in the day, with very few set-piece opportunities in small-sided games.
“I’m not saying she didn’t score the odd header,” he laughs. “But she wasn’t terribly tall and she wouldn’t have been as dominant as she is now, we’ll say, in the air.”
Step-by-step, she got there; Balfe and fellow coach, former team-mate and good friend, Eddie Sheeran, teaching her to head the ball and perfect her now-deadliest attacking weapon: “The ball is only a bag of air, we’d tell her. It’s not going to hurt you.”
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Personality. Attitude. Character.
Also evident from the get-go from all three.
All the attributes it takes to get to the top.
“She was always there ready to listen and learn, she was always available,” Connaughton recalls of McCabe. “Even today, I see it with her younger sister Lauryn coming up now, she’s out there with a ball the whole time. On her own, with the lads, down at games; always with a ball at her feet.
“Katie was just a great young one. She couldn’t wait for the football to start. No bother at all, you’d mix them in with the boys at the time and they were equal, if not better than some of the boys. The boys would always think, ‘Ah, we’re away here, lads,’ but it didn’t work out that way.
“Her passion was always football — even when she left us, you’d always see her around the place playing, when she went on to play with girls teams, she was always around kicking a ball the whole time.”
Quinn, the same. “Louise was very quiet in her own way,” Balfe outlines. “She wasn’t a real outspoken… on the pitch, she wasn’t one of those that goes around shouting at people or anything like that, she just loved to get her job done.
“Even if we lost the match, she’d come off with a smile on her face. She just had that cheeky grin about her.”
Bowdren has similar fond memories of O’Sullivan, most of them game-orientated.
Having earned the title Mr Wilton for his dedication to the club over the years — the ground is also named after him — Bowdren is a real football man, diligently recounting and recollecting games from many years ago.
“We were in the FAI Cup and Senior Cup in 2011. We beat Peamount in the quarter-final 4-1 in Farmleigh Road. We were very happy that day. I was saying then, ‘If Denise stays fit, we’d have won that thing.’ She was also playing with the Gaynor team, she got injured in the Gaynor competition a couple of weeks later.
“We got her up and running so she could play against Wexford Youths and we beat them on penalties up there. St Catherine’s beat us 2-1 in the final then up in Turner’s Cross.
“We did very well. We were knocking on the FAI Cup there at two stages. We won it in 2008, U14. Even for a small girl, she got two headers on the day. She was always good for them.”
Bowdren remembers going to Liverpool for a tournament that same year.
“Denise was U15. We also played an U17 game, we won that as well. There was another girl that played international, Amanda Parkes, on that team as well. Going away for tournaments, you see girls differently. There’s a different aspect to their personality and all that.
“The main thing with Denise was winning that National Cup U14 and getting to the final of the senior cup — and unfortunately that was her last year. The National League started the following year, 2012.”
O’Sullivan headed for Peamount United and Cork City; McCabe was snapped up by Crumlin United, before moving onto girls’ teams at Templeogue and St Joseph’s; and a “heartbroken” Quinn also made tracks towards women’s football heavyweights Peamount when the time arose.
The upward trajectory continuing as they climbed to new heights.
“It’s just amazing the career Louise has had,” Balfe smiles. “Watching her go from being a schoolkid and going to Peamount, and then 20 years later, here she is playing her 99th cap next week. Unbelievable.
“There’s going to be some celebration when she gets to 100. Hopefully it will be in a good light after winning on Tuesday.”
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Legacy. Connection. The ties that bind.
There’s 14 girls teams in Kilnamangh now. “There’s just girls all over the place playing football, which is brilliant,” Connaughton notes.
A lot of that is owing to Katie McCabe.
“When Katie comes home, she’s always around. She goes down to the matches and is always available to the girls. They love going over to get pictures taken with her. And going to watch her in Tallaght — she’s like an idol to the girls. And she’s nice with it as well, she never forgot where she came from.
“She’d do anything, if the club ever want anything at all with Facebook or promoting anything, she’s always made herself available. We have a mural of her here on the local dressing room that Sky put up. You never forget her.”
Likewise in Blessington, where there’s several girls’ teams now.
A far cry from when Quinn was starting out, but unquestionably a direct knock-on effect of her impact.
“Louise is always in contact with them,” Balfe says, “and when she comes home to Blessington anytime, she’ll always nip up to the grounds and see if there’s anything going on. If there’s training on, she’ll go out and mix with the girls and have a quick chat with them. It’s a great boost for them.
“Every time Ireland play in Tallaght, which is only down the road for us, a huge contingent of Blessington girls go to the game. They’ve certainly drawn a lot of inspiration from her. She’ll always come over to them at the end of the match, she’ll come over and sign autographs and get photographs with them. She’s very good that way.
“She’s never forgotten that Blessington was her roots. She’s very much a home bird. You’d often see her during the off-season out pounding the roads, you’d see her doing laps of the town here. Cars would be beeping at her and she’d be waving at them. She loves it and she deserves everything she gets. She’s really great. We are very, very proud of her in Blessington FC.
“To say that somebody from Blessington has been the FAI Player of the Year twice, you know, it’s just incredible.”
Balfe, and his son Derek, are still in contact with Quinn, both keeping a close eye on her progress. Likewise with Bowdren and O’Sullivan, and Connaughton and McCabe.
“I was up in Tallaght at the last match,” the latter enthuses. “I meet her Da around a lot, we talk about going back to the old days! If we’re ever short of a ticket, Gary would always sort us out.
“The funny thing was I was talking to a guy over the weekend, Paddy Heffernan, he had her along the way. I was telling him I was doing this, he said to make sure if you see Katie again to tell her I was asking for her, the best of luck, we’re very proud of her.”
“It’s just great when you see the younger kids, the U7s and U8s, they look up to her,” he adds. “She’s an idol, it’s like a film star coming home when she’s down at the ground. We’ve an astro down there, an academy for the girls. They all know her. It’s the first name they’d say, ‘Oh, Katie McCabe, Katie McCabe!’ She’s a lovely girl, very, very nice.”
At the other end of the scale, there’s Bowdren.
“I’m 72 now, but I still coach our under-11s, 12s, 13s, 15s and 17s, I never miss a match. Always hoping to find another Denise O’Sullivan,” as he told The Irish Times last year.
All three former underage coaches have plans to watch Tuesday night’s showdown.
All with bated breath, rooting them on.
All hoping that these generational talents can qualify for a major tournament.
“I really hope that Louise gets the opportunity to play in a major tournament,” Balfe says.
“When you move on in the years, you don’t get too many chances that you’re so close.
“The whole Ireland team, they deserve a break. The men’s teams, they were knocking on the door for so many years and then suddenly, they qualify for a major tournament and it took off for a while from there.
“It’d be lovely to think that that would happen for the ladies team as well. You can just see the interest has gone through the roof. Every sports news now on the radio or TV involves the ladies team as well as the men’s team. That’s the way it should be of course.”
Indeed.
The last word goes to him, the perfect way to round it all off.
“It brings a smile to your face every time you hear the name Louise Quinn. It’s a dream to see somebody that you really know well do so well. She’s had such a fantastic career.
“But she’s still that little girl on the green to me.”
From little acorns.
To the cusp of a World Cup.
