Katie McCabe - We want our league title back

On Friday Evening Shelbourne Ladies FC continued their build up towards the 2015/16 Women’s National League at their St Anne’s Park training base and after the session, Katie McCabe spoke to Extratime.ie about being back training and her hopes for the season ahead.

“Tonight was a very tough session” McCabe said. “I’m delighted to be back, glad I’m staying with Shelbourne, new club, new set-up, new surroundings, new management team and we’re looking forward to the new season.”

With Raheny United and Shelbourne merging, the Irish international revealed the players have dealt with the situation as a team and that the management made sure to thoroughly brief the players before the news of the merger was ever made public.

“We dealt with it as a team, we got called in as a team at the start of the summer to let us know what was happening - look at the players, it's the same team, with a few new girls coming up the likes of Fiona, Sophie, Dervla.”

McCabe explained that while she was happy with her performance during the 2014/15 season, winning two cups and finishing runner up on the golden boot, she was also disappointed to miss out on a third consecutive Women’s National League title.

“It was a bit unlucky with the goalscoring set-up, the FAI never let us play Cork but what can you do about that. Personally, I felt I had a good season, but it's not great when you're not winning that league and getting to the Champions League so that obviously hurt us. We were happy when we retained the FAI Cup and got the League Cup win - but it hurt us when we didn’t win the league.”

Despite having won every trophy available in Ireland the Shelbourne forward is determined that they will show despite all the success with Raheny United the previous four seasons, the fire still burns to win more trophies.

“We are going to be working so hard in the new few weeks, getting our friendly in and working hard. We are going to win that trophy back no doubt about it.”

With the hard demands of pre-season for a sport women of Katie’s ability, the forward is looking forward to getting back on the pitch with a ball between her legs.

“I’m looking forward to being back on the pitch and getting the touch back, getting the fitness levels back up and being ready to challenge Wexford in the new season.”

Despite the success of last season, which saw McCabe break 20 goals for the first time in the Women’s National League, she is yet to set herself any personal goals for the coming year.

“Personally, no I haven’t thought about it yet. I’m just getting used to the new girls coming in and settling as a team, but I’ll be setting my personal goals in my head.”

With a glowing club career established at just 19, 2015 saw Katie break into Sue Ronan’s National squad last January for the trip to La Manga and Katie now appears to have become an ever-present in the Irish manager’s squad announcements, with McCabe now wanting to continue impressing Ronan with performances for her club and hopefully she can then earn a place in the starting 11 for September's qualifier against Finland.

“It was brilliant when I got the call-up off Sue in January, we went to La Manga first and I’ve been in and around the trips to Spain and obviously the USA was the biggest one for me, I definitely want to be showing Sue when the league starts up I'm capable of earning a place in her European Qualifiers team.”

Katie revealed that the trip to America last May was a brilliant experience but, the forward never expected to play in front of the sold out crowd in San Jose, however when the opportunity came she was more than delighted.

“I was happy when I was just named in the squad, but I didn’t think I’d get on. When Sue, Tom and Paul told me to warm up the nerves got going however, they completely shut off when I got on the pitch and got my first touch - it was an unbelievable experience and no doubt I’d love to do it again.

Although the result against the USA didn’t go Ireland’s way, McCabe was delighted to finish the tour four days later with a win and a start against Haiti in Fort Lauderdale.

“I was delighted [to play] against Haiti we didn't play as well as we should have but we got the win in the end and it was good to get a run out.”