Edenderry women's soccer trailblazer set for Áras reception
While members of the Republic of Ireland women's national football team like Katie McCabe are household names with huge social media followings, the same cannot be said for the trailblazers who came before them.
One of those trailblazers was Catherine Cummins, who moved from her native Finglas to raise her family in Edenderry over three decades ago. Not only was the dynamic mother and grandmother a member of the very first ladies soccer team to line out for Ireland on the international stage – but she had to wait all of 50 years to collect her international cap!
“Things are very different today to what they were in 1973, when the first Irish ladies soccer team lined out against Wales,” she says. “We had no Irish kit as such, and whatever we got to wear we had to give it back at the end of the game. That's how it was and I we just accepted it because we were happy to play.”
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Catherine Cummins (second from right, in front row) pictured with the first ladies soccer team she played for, the Civil Defence team, circa 1971.Image 2 of 4
A delighted Catherine Cummins from Edenderry pictured with former Late Late Show host, Ryan Turbridy, when members of the first International ladies soccer team were invited to appear as guests on the Late Late Show in 2023.Image 3 of 4
Members of the Irish ladies football team who participated in a trial at All Hallow’s College, Dublin in 1983, including Edenderry resident, Catherine Cummins (first player on the left, front row).Image 4 of 4
A fresh-faced Catherine Cummins, who was pictured by the Irish Independent for an article which appeared in the sports section of the newspaper in 1972. She was wearing her school uniform in the picture.Growing up in Finglas, Catherine (née Rafferty) can recall a childhood spent playing soccer on the green in front of her house with all the boys from the locality. “There was very little else to do, all our time was spent outside kicking a ball, and there was no such thing as girls teams at the time.”
When Catherine and her friends read a newspaper article where the Civil Defence were looking for girls to join a soccer team, they jumped at the chance.
“I think ladies soccer was started as a bit of a joke,” she says, “but I joined the Civil Defence team anyway and I loved it.”
At that time - the early '70s - ladies soccer began to gain a bit of a foothold and most of the big factories around Dublin set up their own teams.
Catherine Cummins joined the Jeyes team and ended up travelling to Reims, in north East France, to play five games over six days at various locations in France against a team which was mainly made up of international French players. “Their manager wanted to highlight and promote ladies soccer at the time.”
However, the big breakthrough for ladies football came in 1973 when the very first international team was set up – and Catherine was included in the squad that travelled to Llanelli in Wales and defeated the home side 3-2. “We had to pay all our own expenses” she recalls “and there was no TV or radio, or any fuss whatsoever about the game.”
She agrees that it is all “a very far cry” from the high-profile nature of the current Irish team, but she is delighted at the success of the ladies game nevertheless.
“I was only watching a game with my son the other night and the pitches are like golf courses, and you can only imagine the kinds of pitches we played on back in the '70s,” she laughs.
Catherine moved to Edenderry in 1990 and has made her home in the north Offaly town ever since and reared her family of eight, who are now aged between 45 and 31. She also has eight grandchildren, and says Edenderry is “a lovely town” and was the ideal place to rear her large family.
She says that not many people were aware of the fact that she was a member of the very first Irish women's national soccer team – even in her own family – until the FAI finally decided to honour the team on their 50th anniversary last year.
So began over a year of celebrations during which Catherine and her teammates were formally presented with their special 50th anniversary international commemorative caps last September.
They were also presented with a specially commissioned limited edition coin that celebrates the women's national team's achievement in reaching the 2023 World Cup, and Catherine was one of 19 ladies soccer players to be presented by the Lord Mayor of Dublin with a special piece of crystal marking Finglas (as a Dublin suburb) with the most (19) senior International players.
The culmination of the celebrations for the pioneering women on the first ever women's national soccer team will be a visit to Áras an Uachtaráin on January 28 for a special reception with the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins.
She will be accompanied by her son, Tony, who manages the U10 Derry Rovers team in Edenderry along with fellow trainer, Jimmy Murray.
“It's a wonderful honour to represent your country on the international stage,” says Catherine Cummins, “but we just took it all in our stride and didn't really think too much about it at the time.”