It was a few years back that Olivia O’Toole recalled mentoring a new arrival in the Irish senior football squad. “I was sitting with her having dinner, it was when the senior players take the younger girls in,” she said. “I asked her what her ambitions were in life. I thought it would be to play football for Ireland, but she said she wanted to win an Olympic gold medal at boxing. She was 16. I said it’s not an Olympic sport and she said ‘yes, but it will be’.”
Katie Taylor, of course.
There's a sweet symmetry, then, to their story, that come 2020 Taylor and O'Toole, who went on to become close friends, should share a stage - in virtual form, at least - at The Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman of the Year Awards. Taylor collected her fifth overall award, while O'Toole's name was added to the Outstanding Contribution roll of honour.
While the Bray woman went on to hang up her football boots and fulfil all her boxing ambitions, O’Toole stuck with the game she first became besotted with when, as a young girl, she would sit with her father watching Match of the Day on Saturday nights. And she went on to become one of the finest players - many would argue THE finest - to ever represent Ireland.
She was given a football for her sixth birthday and started playing with the boys’ team in her home patch of Sherriff Street in inner city Dublin.
O’Toole, now 49, has talked powerfully over the years about how football “saved my life”, as she put it, at a time when so many around her succumbed to the scourge of heroin, including her younger sister Julie who wrote a book about her experience, ‘Heroin: A True Story of Drug Addiction, Hope and Triumph’.
She put all of her focus on her sport, at a time when the outlets for footballing girls were limited, O’Toole left with nowhere to play between the ages of 14 and 16 when girls over 14 were banned from playing on boys’ teams.
At 16 she joined Drumcondra and over the rest of her career, which saw her have spells with Blacklion, Castle Rovers, Shamrock Rovers and Raheny United, she won nine league titles and eight FAI Cups.
On the international front, she never looked back after scoring the winner on her debut in 1991 against Spain in Seville in a European Championship qualifier, going on to score 54 goals in 130 appearances (at least we think it was 130, it could have been more, the record-keeping for women's football back then not the most meticulous). She played for her country for 18 years, 10 of them as captain, before her retirement in 2009.
“Football is my life - I eat, sleep and breathe it, I just loved pulling on the green jersey,” she said.
“Renowned for her unpredictability and a whole range of trickery, Olivia’s eye for goal and magical left foot sets her out as one of Ireland’s greatest ever talents at any level,” read the FAI citation when the three-time International Player of the Year was given the Special Merit award in 2010.
Her contribution to football, and her community, since her retirement has been no less impressive, O'Toole coaches youngsters in Sheriff Street as part of her role as a recreation officer with Dublin City Council, the inner city football tournament renamed the Olivia O'Toole Cup in her honour.
One of her proudest days was when she carried the 2012 Olympic torch through her home patch, a patch she loves with a passion to this day. “I got away from Sheriff Street - just away from the drugs, not away from the people because the people in Sheriff Street are beautiful,” she told RTE earlier this year. “If you want to make a life for yourself, you have to get out of it. But never, ever forget where you came from.”
