BACK IN THE mix after her international retirement reversal, Ireland centurion Áine O’Gorman walks into the room with a massive smile on her face.
And a nasty looking astro-turf burn on her knee.
Áine O’Gorman pictured at the team’s base at Johnstown House yesterday.
Source: Ryan Byrne/INPHO
“Big sliding tackle,” she laughs. “Don’t think I even got the ball!”
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Having hung up her Irish jersey after her earning her 100th cap in 2018, the 30-year-old has made a U-turn ahead of the crucial double-header of Euro 2021 qualifiers. She has committed for the full campaign as Ireland look to reach a first-ever major tournament.
Manager Vera Pauw came knocking for O’Gorman, and the Peamount captain answered her country’s call. The pair had a casual chat after the 2019 FAI Cup final but at that point, a return was not discussed. It was Ireland assistant coach Eileen Gleeson — O’Gorman’s club manager for years in the past — who told her the Dutch boss was interested. And everything went from there.
“Vera gave me a shout and it was an opportunity I wasn’t going to turn down,” the Wicklow native explains, as injuries in defence paved the way for her second coming.
“I’d probably regret it if I had.
“After the new management came in, I probably started to get itchy feet. I was watching the girls play in Tallaght and it was something in the back of my mind, especially off the back of a good club season.
It’s not that she regretted her retirement decision, but she wanted more.
Walking away felt right at the time, and it was something she thought long and hard about as Ireland’s 2019 World Cup qualifying dream came to an end in the Colin Bell Era.
“It was something I’d been thinking about throughout that campaign,” O’Gorman concedes. “I probably wasn’t enjoying my international football in the way I should have.
“I’d been committed for 12 years, since I was 16, so at the time – and I still don’t regret it – I decided to take that step back and just let the younger players come through.”
“A mixture of everything I think,” she adds when asked why she wasn’t enjoying her football, and questioned on whether it was tension with the then-manager, the style of play or the position she was played in, for example.
A personal trainer by trade, O’Gorman enjoyed football from a different perspective through her hiatus. While she continued to star for her club Peamount — and skippered them to a first league crown since 2012 — the Enniskerry woman undertook regular punditry work with RTÉ.
Appearing on screens across the length and breadth of the country, she was a leading figure through the national broadcaster’s Women’s World Cup coverage last summer, and then went on to analyse her former Ireland team in their earlier qualifiers.
“I was booked in for the match on Thursday,” she laughs, referring of course to her side’s must-win qualifier against Greece in Tallaght [KO 7.15pm].
“He asked me to the do the next game and I just texted and said, ‘Sorry, my circumstances have changed.’ Then it came out we had a laugh about it then.”
“Look, the games I worked on, especially the Ukraine game, there was only room for praise in the way the team performed. In the Greece game, I think Greece were quite tactically clever and smart in the way they played and it was a sucker-punch in the nature of the way we conceded the late goal. But look, we’re here to put that right on Thursday.”
In training yesterday.
Source: Ryan Byrne/INPHO
That Ukraine game she refers to was their second win from two, a thrilling 3-2 victory against the second seeds to add to their previous 2-0 opener against Montenegro. A Greek slip-up came afterwards, as the hosts grabbed a last-gasp equaliser in Athens.
O’Gorman is keen for her side to “assimilate” the Ukraine performance and the quality of goals scored within, as well as keeping a clean sheet, having looked at football differently for the past while. Both the punditry and her the completion of her Uefa B coaching badge challenged her to analyse performances, and look from the outside in.
“Probably taking a step back helps you look at the overall picture rather than just you in the situation with the team,” she nods. on learnings. “It can be a learning experience.
“Obviously letting in the late Greece goal… we’d be looking to rectify that going forward but I think that Ukraine performance typifies how good this team can be when they are let play free, attacking football. They can be a massive attacking threat.”