Geraldine McGlinchey recalls her part in Irish football history

Geraldine McGlinchey looks at the photo now and can still feel the moment she helped to make Irish football history.

Fifty years ago next week, on May 13, 1973 to be precise, she played on the right-hand side for Ireland in a 3-2 win over Wales.

She had yet to celebrate her 16th birthday and was still the teenage Geraldine Molloy in those days. A native of Sion Mills, she would later marry and relocate to Castlefin.

At Stebonheath Park, Llanelli, she was a member of the first ever Irish women’s team to play in a recognised international.

“It was a dream come true,” she tells Donegal Live ahead of an appearance on The Late Late Show tonight with the trailblazing team. “To play the full game was just brilliant.

“I was just a wee young girl at the time, but there was a girl there who was actually younger.”

The team never received caps, but that will change with every player set to receive a commemorative cap. The squad of ’73 gathered for a reunion at the Westin Hotel in Dublin on Friday.

“We started it all off,” Geraldine says now as she looks forward to watching the Vera Pauw-managed Ireland at the Women’s World Cup this summer - the first time the Girls in Green will play at the finals.

“I still watch the girls and still keep an eye on women’s football. We’ve all been invited to a friendly against France in Tallaght and I’m really looking forward to that. It is really great to see ladies football going well.”

An inside forward, she played for TT (Twin Towns) Harps in the first ever Ladies League of Ireland season in ’73 and played for a LOI select in Scotland in 1974.

“We only played in the League of Ireland for just over a year because we couldn’t get the funding,” she says. “We had to fund ourselves. The likes of Tena Quigley and Teresa Connolly would’ve played and we had players from all over, Sion, Newtownstewart and Castlederg as well as Donegal.

“Eddie McNulty was our manager and he got us into the League of Ireland. We traveled all over the country, but the travel was expensive and we paid our own way.

“We played for years in a Donegal League too for TT Harps and we won a lot of cups.”

Paula Gotham, a 19-year-old from Dundalk, scored a hat-trick in the 3-2 win over Wales and the significance of it all hasn’t been lost on those involved.

Geraldine says: “It has been great to see everyone again. You just realise where you were sitting for that first team photograph. I just loved playing football, it was a great experience.”