“This could be difficult at the start, messy in the middle and beautiful at the end,” Carla Ward said of her reign as Republic of Ireland manager last week when she named her squad for the upcoming Nations League double-header against Greece, the first of those games in Crete on Friday.
Difficult would be a generous description for the opening to the campaign, not least that 4-0 humbling away to Slovakia, and Ward will hope for better than “messy” against a Greek side beaten in its first two games. She will also long for a “beautiful” conclusion to the group in Páirc Uí Chaoimh come June when Ireland play their final fixture against the Slovakians.
All but three of the manager’s 23-strong squad were in action at the weekend, Katie McCabe one of the absentees after picking up her second suspension of the season – her latest yellow card nudging her further ahead at the top of “the most booked players in the history of the WSL” list.
After a hectic spell for Arsenal, though, including last Wednesday’s epic Champions League quarter-final win over Real Madrid, Ward will probably be happy enough that her captain had a breather.
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She will also be happy with Saoirse Noonan’s goalscoring form, the Cork woman the highest scoring forward in club football by some distance in the current squad. On Friday night she got her 29th of the season for Celtic, although it counted for little in the end – Celtic suffered their third defeat in a row, this time to Glasgow City, the defence of their league title having gone belly-up. They are now seven points behind Rangers and Hibernian.
Noonan’s international career has been an odd one. She made her debut nine years ago, but has only won three more caps since, the last in 2023. She did not play at all during Eileen Gleeson’s time in charge, which pointed to the then manager’s doubts about the quality of the Scottish Premier League and the value of Noonan’s goal haul.
Ward has, though, given her another chance and recalled her to the senior set-up. It’ll be interesting to see if she gets the chance to convert that club form into goals for Ireland.
Marissa Sheva was another player who had a spell being overlooked for the squad, but Ward showed no little faith in her in the last window, the Pennsylvania native featuring against Turkey and Slovakia – and that was when she was without a club, having been released by Portland Thorns in December.
She’s found new employers, though, joining Sunderland in the Championship last week, making her debut on Sunday in a 4-2 defeat by Charlton.
But the weekend, of course, belonged to Ruesha Littlejohn with that goal from the halfway line for Shamrock Rovers. As she said to the person who demeaned her effort on the tweet machine, and the league she plays in, “ya massive gimp”. A legend, that woman.
