Getting to know Peamount's Robbie Mulligan

With the Women’s National League only having seven teams competing in it this year, you may have noticed a familiar name was missing from the fixture list on the opening day of the season. All that will change this Sunday as Peamount United and their new manager will finally take their bow in the 2014/15 Continental Tyres Women’s National League.

Robbie Mulligan’s Peas will travel to Eammon Deacy Park on Sunday to take on Galway WFC, another club that is boosted with some young and exciting talent as well as a fresh face in the dugout. Galway and Don O’Riordan may have come out on the wrong end against the Waves last weekend but they will be hoping for a better outcome at home against Peamount United.

The Peas, who famously won the inaugural WNL in 2011 and represented the league in the last 32 of The Champions League, have turned to an up and coming manager to lead them as they go through something of a transitional period following the departure of the majority of their winning squad of previous seasons and the management that helped bring the success.

Although Robbie Mulligan may be something of an unknown quantity at the highest level at women’s football in Ireland, the DCU graduate has plenty of passion for the game and experience of coaching abroad that was enough for the people at Peamount to give Robbie the chance to take the club forward. Although Robbie is under no false illusions of the scale of the job he has took on, he does resemble a quietly confident young manager that alongside his own coaching team will be aiming to build on the past success of the club.

“The club is building for the future, we have a platform to build on from the success of the previous program, and the club has a good reputation at underage and senior level, so basically we want to rebuilt and have a full model going forward.”

Peamount United has being a great club for the talented girls that got to pull on the famous green. After all the success of the past three seasons and getting to play Champions League football, players such as Louise Quinn and Stephanie Roche have earned contracts for themselves at full-time professional clubs across Europe and Scandinavia. Julie-Ann Russell, Aine O’Gorman and Emily Cahill have joined the former manager of Peamount Eileen Gleeson at the newly formed UCD Waves.

Robbie knows he will have to rely on a lot of the youth players to make the set-up this season, but he will be able to drawn on his experience from dealing with elite players from his time in California where he worked on a football program to help develop future stars of the game.

Coast 2 Coast is a successful training program in America that caters for young aspiring footballers that want to further their skills and develop in the game. The program is in partnership with over 70 schools on the west coast of America and it has a full complement of young and upcoming coaches to help teach young footballers within the local districts.

Robbie was initially brought over on a summer visa to help out, but such was his success over there that he later became the Director of Coaching with his time in the States being extended for a number of years.

“It was a great time, it gave me an opportunity to progress my own coaching and the later opportunity to work with elite players, America is the pinnacle of women’s football and the success of the national team speaks for itself. The underage set-up is one of the most professional I have ever seen.”

Robbie will be able to call on some of the girls that featured in the Under 19’s squad this summer, such as goalkeeper Brooke Dunne, who will be between the sticks for the Peas this season and her fellow teammate from Ireland like Rachel Doyle and Katie Nolan. He will also have some experience to balance out his team, with players such as Sylvia Gee and Clare Kinsella (club captain) being able to offer support to their younger teammates.

While speaking respectively of the opposition and taking a few moments out to compliment the amazing work done by Raheny United in making the last 32 of The Champions League, Robbie is confident of how his Peas will perform this season and he wants to challenge for the title.

“We have elite female athletes and they don’t train all the time just to make up the numbers, so while we have a new squad, we have not lowered our standards, if anything we are raising them. We are going out to win every game in the league and cup this year and there is no chance we will ever drop them standards at Peamount”.