2022 Women's National League Award Nominees confirmed

Ellen Molloy

Wexford's Ellen Molloy is nominated for this year's WNL Player of the Year award. Credit: Muller Santos (ETPhotos)

The 2022 Women’s National League Awards are just a few weeks away and the nominees for the main awards have been announced.

The nominees for WNL Player of the Year are Peamount United’s Aine O’Gorman, Athlone Town’s Emily Corbet and Wexford Youths’ Ellen Molloy.

The trio make up three of the top five goal scorers in this year’s competition with O’Gorman claiming the Golden Boot with a hat-trick on the last day of the season to put her on 22 goals with Corbet and Molloy trailing her on 20 and 16 goals respectively.

O’Gorman has won this award previously while this is Corbet’s first time to be nominated. Molloy is a former Young Player of the Year having won that award in 2020.

This year’s Young Player of the Year will go to either Athlone’s Muireann Devaney, Shelbourne’s Jessie Stapleton or Sligo Rovers’ Emma Doherty.

All three have had fine seasons with Doherty having a breakout year for newcomers Sligo with eleven goals to her name in 2022.

Jessie Stapleton helped Shelbourne to their second WNL title in a row while Devaney had another excellent season which saw her help Athlone to a fantastic second place finish in the league.

Also announced are the nominees for WNL Manager of the Year with Tommy Hewitt, Noel King and Steve Feeney all nominated.

In just their third season at senior level Hewitt coached Athlone Town to a second place finish in the WNL with their first ever appearance in the FAI Women’s Cup Final to come.

Last year’s winner Noel King also has a cup final to look forward to with Shels, and that comes after the manager led the Reds to back to back WNL titles.



Feeney gets the nomination after Sligo Rovers’ first season in the WNL. The coach led the side to a respectable eighth in an impressive first campaign which saw the Bit O’Red beat Wexford Youths and the eventual WNL champions Shelbourne.

Two awards have already been confirmed, the aforementioned Golden Boot goes to Aine O’Gorman while Amanda Budden has won the Golden Gloves for the second year running after 14 clean sheets this season.

The Team of the Season will also be announced at the awards along with the WNL under-19 and under-17 Players of the Year.

The Awards will take place on Thursday, 24 November.

About Paul Corcoran

Paul Corcoran is an experienced writer and journalist and has contributed to various publications including the Galway United match programme Maroon View. He spends much of his time covering the fortunes of Galway United's teams … View Full Profile