OF ALL THE teams in the Women’s National League, arguably none feels the absence of a key player quite as deeply as Wexford Youths.
The departure of Rianna Jarrett ahead of the 2020 season, for professional football at Brighton, took a guaranteed 20+ goals out of the team.
Influential figures like Aisling Frawley, Katrina Parrock and Emma Hansberry – players who bought into the unique drive of this team – have also departed over the last couple of years.
That stats speak for themselves: four league titles and three FAI Cup wins make Wexford the most successful team in Ireland over the past decade.
Success brings attention and there was never any doubt that a fully-fit Jarrett would be prised across the water sooner rather than later.
The striker still hasn’t been replaced; Sinead Taylor and Lynn Marie Grant have chipped in, but the burden of replacing those goals has fallen on Kylie Murphy and teenager Ellen Molloy.
There’s no single reason for why that is. Wexford, despite training in the more accessible Carlow IT grounds, have a small catchment area compared to the Dublin teams, for instance.
More than that, captain Murphy explains, it takes a particular type of player to flourish at Youths – moreso than talent, a player needs to fit the character and work ethic of the team to thrive.
“We don’t have the biggest reach and it’s been like that for 10 years. There’s not much you can do about that, just try to get through the season as best you can.
“There’s a few young kids coming up, and there’s always players that have maybe left the Women’s National League for a year or two and might want to come back.
“There is a great standard around, but for me and for Wexford, you can’t just go signing any player. It takes a certain type of player to play with Wexford, to fit into the mould of what we do and how close we are. It’s important to be finding the right players as well.
“It might not always be the best players that are on show – we’re looking for a player to come in and be a team-mate and do what we do.”
Murphy has bucked the conventional wisdom that the older a player gets, the further they drop back the pitch. At 33, the Carlow native has just finished her first season as a striker. It has gone well, judging by her Player of the Year nomination and 15 goals, second only to Áine O’Gorman in the table.
Two goals in the unforgettable final day clash with Shelbourne that saw the Reds snatch an unlikely league crown from Peamount United weren’t enough to overhaul O’Gorman.
It’s a remarkable turnaround for a player whose immediate reaction, when she was told at the start of the season she’d be moved forward from midfield, was to laugh.
“I still don’t think I’m a striker,” jokes Murphy, who can pick up her fourth FAI Cup medal should they reverse the scoreline of last Saturday night in Tallaght this weekend.
“When the lads said it to me at the start of the year, I wasn’t really sure and thought they were messing with me. I thought they were just winding me up in pre-season.
“It took me probably to the middle of the season to nearly find my feet. We were rotating and I was dropping into the 10, and it was just chopping and changing, but I’ve worked hard.
“Stephen [Quinn, Youths manager] has worked really hard with me this year, just extra sessions and getting up and doing striker’s turns and movements and running off the shoulder.
“Things that, for me as a midfielder, I’d have been so used to the late run into the box, not being tracked. He’s worked really hard with me and worked really hard for me.
“We had a laugh there during the week because he said at the start of the season, ‘you’re going to get 20 goals this year.’ I laughed at him and went ‘not a hope of 20 goals.’
“I have 15 in the league and 17 in total… a hat-trick on Sunday and I’ll be getting his quota! That would be alright, wouldn’t it?”