McDermott pleased with WNL progress

Raheny manager Ger McDermott thinks that the Women's National League has been a success, but argues that more needs to be done to promote the league in the future.

“The key now is getting the message out there that some of the football is actually excellent” McDermott said. “It's as good as the men's game to watch, I feel. So when we play the likes of Cork and Peamount, they should really push those games to get people to them. That's as much up to the club as it is to the media.”

With just four league matches and the league cup left in the season, McDermott feels that the inaugural Women's National League couldn't have gone better on an organisational level for Raheny. “Purely looking at my own club, it's gone really well” he said. “We took a big step, a step into the unknown- expecting the players to make themselves available four times a week without getting a penny for it.”

“We weren't sure how that would go, but I think they've all committed. When you're winning it's particularly easy, so from our point of view as long as the girls are doing well they're happy to do it.”

This season has seen a bit of a gap open up at the top, with just a point separating Peamount and Raheny as they duke it out for first place. But behind them, there is thirteen points to the next team- Wexford Youths.

“You could argue there's a gap” McDermott agrees. “Certainly at the start of the season there was. But then you look at ourselves and Shamrock Rovers: we played them in the first game of the season and we had all the possession and it was 5-0. Then they came here and we beat them 3-2, they've clearly improved.”

“I think there is a gap but it's closing. Teams are starting to defend well. Castlebar caught us out, Wexford caught us out and people perceive Wexford to be a weak team.”

Most of the major women's leagues do have one or two dominant teams, but McDermott says that the Irish league remaining relatively open will benefit the game here in the long run: “it's brilliant for the league” he says.

With just six teams in the league, expansion has always been a talking point. “I know if they were to expand the league, the worry would be that there would be another gap then” the Raheny manager says. “Obviously they have to expand the league, 6 teams isn't enough.”

Having a national league that is of a high quality is crucial to having a successful national side, as teams like Japan and France showed in the last World Cup. McDermott says that the Women's National League, if promoted and managed correctly, could herald new success at international level.

“I'd be more excited two or three years down the line to see how the senior team, the under 19s and the under 17s are doing” he says. “They've already got a fantastic level of success at underage but I think that could get even better. With a good national league structure we could be going and expecting to win tournaments rather than it being a once off. “

The recent squad which travelled to the Algarve Cup featured several domestic players, including Raheny's Megan Campbell. McDermott says that he is pleased that so many of his players are now internationals, but thinks that a few more could be deserving of call-up too. “Megan [Campbell]'s going with the seniors, we have three girls with the under 19s- Ciara Grant, Katie McCabe and Siobhan Killeen. Then Shauna Newman is involved at under 17s level but there's a few players there that I hope people have taken notice of. The likes of Seana Cooke and Mary Waldron who might be seen as a little bit older.”   

View the remaining fixtures in the Women's National League