Lucan United announce club’s return to senior women’s soccer
By Hayden Moore
WITH Lucan United producing a number of talented female footballers over the past few years, the club has announced it will be relaunching a senior women's team.
Up until a few years ago, Lucan had a successful women's outfit competing in summer leagues, but that all stopped as players began to focus on life outside of football.
Lucan Utd Under 18 player Roisin Ahmed
"We did have a women's team before, but we bowed out with that a few years ago," Lucan United Treasurer John Doyle told The Echo.
"It was tough at the time. Players were struggling to get to training and generally girls were just busy with their lives.
“We started to really focus on building up the girls section and thankfully the underage girls section is flourishing now at this stage to the point where we can start thinking of a women’s team again.”
Since 2017, when Lucan formed a partnership with Shamrock Rovers, a clear pathway has been established for players to continue playing their beloved sport.
The current pathway for Lucan players sees them come through the underage ranks and hopefully progress on to the Hoops Under 17 Women’s National League outfit when they reach a certain standard.
But Doyle acknowledges this pathway is not always an option for players.
“The progression plan with Rovers is of a very high standard and not everybody is going to go down that pathway” he said.
“So we’ve had instances where a team makes its way through and once they’re finished with the Under 18s, because there is nowhere for them to go, they end up leaving the club.
“The idea behind re-establishing a women’s team is to provide a pathway for all girls to keep playing football, after they’ve finished up playing schoolgirl football.”
With 101 girls spread out across seven teams, the club is hoping to start a girls-only branch of the academy in the not-too-distant future to continue their development.
“We’ve got our structures in place now, the club has been recognised with the Mark One Star of the FAI Club Mark which recognises the work we’ve been doing to develop the club to a high standard,” Doyle pointed out.
Women interested in playing for Lucan can email lucanunitedfc@ gmail.com
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