There’s a bit of a deja vu about these weekly round-ups of Republic of Ireland players’ club activities. More often than not, they start with: Katie McCabe was at it again. And she was, this time scoring twice for Arsenal in Sunday’s 2-1 win away to Bristol City in the Women’s Super League.
The first was a left-footed thumper from the edge of the box, the second, just to prove she possesses a right foot, a smash in to the roof of the net after an Arsenal corner. Bristol City captain Megan Connolly, McCabe’s Irish team-mate, could only roll her eyes, she’s seen it all before.
Out of the Republic’s 13 WSL players, McCabe and Connolly were just two of four starters, the others Courtney Brosnan and Heather Payne who were on the decidedly wrong end of a 5-0 defeat by Manchester United.
The only other player to get WSL game time was Izzy Atkinson who came on for the last 12 minutes of West Ham’s game against Liverpool. And she made a sizeable impact too, injecting no little pace and energy into her team before they levelled the game in the 95th minute.
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It was a decent enough weekend too for an estate on the south side of Cork on the English footballing front, two of its former residents having a happy time of it with their clubs.
On Saturday, Chiedozie Ogbene scored his first Premier League goal in Luton Town’s draw with Nottingham Forest, and come Sunday his old buddy Saoirse Noonan was helping herself to a double for Durham against Blackburn Rovers in the Championship.
That brought to five the number of goals Noonan has scored in Durham’s last three games, among her chief assisters in that spell former Peamount United forward Eleanor Ryan-Doyle. The sole consolation for Blackburn was Tyler Toland’s first goal for the club.
Lucy Quinn, meanwhile, had a good day for Birmingham City, providing three assists in their 5-2 win over Watford, Lily Agg among the goals.
It was shaping up to be the perfect day for Caitlin Hayes when she opened the scoring for Celtic in the Old Firm derby against Rangers, with a by now highly familiar header from a corner, but Rangers fought back in the last half-hour to end Celtic’s perfect start to the season, Rio Hardy scoring their winner six minutes from time.
