Updated at 19.26
IT WAS a seemingly small enough decision but it ultimately had an indelible impact.
For Méabh De Búrca, Galway club Salthill Devon’s choice to set up a girls’ section when she was 12 had life-altering consequences.
“When I was in primary school, there were no female clubs in Galway underage,” she tells The 42.
“We would play every day, myself and another girl, Claire Molloy, who ended up playing rugby for Ireland, the two of us would be playing football in the yard with the boys. The rest of the girls weren’t doing it.
“I was playing lots of sports at the time like athletics, basketball, and Gaelic football.
“Although soccer was always my first love, if Salthill Devon never set up the girls’ section, there wouldn’t have been an outlet for me to play so I would have probably just focused on a different sport.”
De Búrca is only 34 now, so it’s worth noting how far Irish soccer has come in a relatively short space of time, emerging from the doldrums of years past to the point where the women’s national side is now capable of qualifying for the World Cup and grassroots level for girls — while still far from perfect — has developed substantially.
“There wouldn’t have been a pathway for me and I wouldn’t have been scouted for Ireland if I wasn’t playing with the club or with the Gaynor Cup team, the Connacht team,” says De Búrca.
“I remember the first training, there weren’t many of us there and for about a year, I think there were eight of us in the whole club, eight girls every different age. All underage, every girl.
“The coaches would have to join in to make up a five-a-side and the coach’s son in some cases if there were only seven of us.
“So for at least a year, we used to just turn up and just a few of us would be training.”
Despite these considerable obstacles, De Búrca never once considered giving up what she describes as her “favourite time of the week”.
There were a handful of girls who shared her passion. Emer Flatley, a future Ireland underage international and current FAI Development Officer, was a neighbour.
“There were Connacht trials then for the Gaynor Cup team. And I remember for the first trial in Galway, just two of us turned up. So needless to say, we made it through to the next round.
“It was underdeveloped at the time, it was just the structure and the pathway wasn’t in place, which is completely different to how it is now.
“I suppose a career wasn’t really an option. Girls say they dream of being a professional footballer, or dream of playing for Ireland, but I didn’t know that was possible. So it wasn’t really ever a dream. I didn’t know women could get paid to play football.”
What De Búrca lacked in resources, she made up for with passion and ultimately was able to forge a playing career from these somewhat unpromising beginnings.
While still a teenager, she played alongside fellow future Ireland international Niamh Fahey — who is a little less than a year older than De Búrca — as part of an FAI Cup-winning Galway team. She subsequently competed for the Irish side in the Uefa Cup without Fahey, who had moved to Arsenal.
She was by then also studying commerce at the National University of Ireland, Galway, before another opportunity arose.
After impressing with the Irish U19s, a coach at the University of New Haven in the US offered her a soccer scholarship.
Following the completion of her degree in Galway and having established herself in the Irish squad (the first call-up she received was in place of a certain Katie Taylor, who missed the match away to Germany in order to compete at a boxing event), De Búrca made the voyage to America.
She undertook an MBA (Masters of Business Administration) with sports management and played a couple of seasons for New Haven Chargers, Connecticult-based CFC Passion and Boston Aztec.
“It was the first time really then that I was completely immersed in the training,” she recalls.
“We had a lot of emphasis on physicality and the gym would be a big focus, which it hadn’t been up to that point, I wasn’t really exposed to it.
“It’s not like now where they have gym programmes. I didn’t get a gym programme until I moved to America really properly, although we had bits and pieces here [in Ireland], it wasn’t so developed.
“I still remember the first morning of our spring training, I couldn’t actually lift myself out of the bed. My body was sore with muscles I didn’t know I had. So I actually had to lie in bed for a while trying to get power in my body to lift me up.”
Consequently, De Búrca emerged from the US experience as a significantly better player.
“There was no national league at the time [in Ireland]. And so, any games I played with Salthill, we just played in the National Cup. So you’d only get a few competitive games a year, whereas over there you were playing more regularly.”
She played at a semi-professional level in Boston and trained with Boston Breakers, a professional team, but left the States with her Visa on the verge of expiring.
By 2012 though, De Búrca was keen to play professionally. England was still semi-pro so Scandinavia appeared to be her best bet.
Norwegian club Amazon Grimstad was the initial destination — Irish teammate Shannon Smyth also played there and had recommended the club to De Búrca.
Going from Boston to Grimstad — a town with a population of roughly 20,000 people — was “a big culture shock”.
While loving the new experience, De Búrca couldn’t help but feel a little bored on occasion off the pitch.
“There wasn’t really much else to do there other than to train and rest. So we really lived like full-time athletes and we would have gone to the gym during the day.
“I knew that I wasn’t going to be playing professionally for years. I liked it, but it was always [the case that] my brain wasn’t really getting [enough stimulation]. We were sitting around every day and just watching TV in between training and you have to try to rest and everything.
“It just wasn’t a lifestyle I knew that I would be having for years to come. So I just wanted to try something new.”
She spent the following season playing alongside another Irish international, Louise Quinn. The pair helped Eskilstuna United gain promotion to Sweden’s top tier in 2013 before De Búrca opted to return home.
“Once I heard that Galway WFC were setting up a [Women's National League] team, I instantly wanted to move back and play with them,” she remembers. “But I also knew that I needed a job. So I just put it on the table to them that if they found me a job, I’d move home and I’d play with the team. And if I didn’t find a job, then I’d go back to Sweden for another year — my preference was obviously to come home.
“In the end, they found a job. So it was quite an interesting one because I got a phone call from RSA to say I had an interview with them. And I knew that somebody had handed in my CV and I went for what I thought was an interview for the Road Safety Authority. It was actually for the Royal and Sun Alliance Insurance Company. Luckily, I found out a few minutes before the interview.
“So I got to the right place, the right office. I ended up working there alongside playing with Galway WFC.”
The decision to play part-time football was partially why De Búrca eventually slipped out of the reckoning for the Irish team. The last of her 52 caps was won in 2017 as she opted to prioritise life outside of sport, qualifying as an accountant in 2020.
“I knew that I wanted to have challenges outside of football because it takes over your life,” she explains. “You think maybe it’s more than it is when your whole life is based around it.
“If you’re playing well or if your team is winning, you think that life is great and then if you have a bad game or your team loses a big match, you somehow think it’s the end of the world. I suppose it just puts things in perspective when you have other outside things to keep your mind off the football. So that side of it, I enjoyed having just an outlet and different interests as well outside of the football life.
“Almost my entire 20s were spent in hotel rooms and on football pitches, so it’s been really nice to be able to travel as a regular person and there are just so many things to see in the world.
“I did a few months in Asia last year and a few months in South America this year and you wouldn’t have had the time [previously] because you would just be so dedicated and committed to sport at the time, soccer was always in the back of your mind.”
She also stopped lining out for Galway after nine seasons in order to go travelling but plays GAA these days with local club St Michaels.
“I think I will play [soccer] again,” she says. “I just don’t know what level I’ll play at, I wouldn’t say I’m officially retired just yet.”
She also has a Uefa B licence and coaching is something she would “like to pursue a bit more when I’m settled in one place and not travelling”.
For now, though, De Búrca has a busy few weeks ahead as an RTÉ pundit for the Women’s World Cup, having previously worked for TG4 as part of coverage for the 2019 tournament.
It’s another opportunity that surely would never have arisen had it not been for Salthill Devon setting up a girls’ section all those years ago.