Short Documentary about Irish Women's Football

Short Documentary about Irish Women's Football

The First Game: A forgotten history of women's football in Ireland

Hi there!

We are a group of students from TU Dublin making a short documentary about the begining of women’s soccer in Ireland.

Up until recently, women’s soccer has been overlooked, with very little records kept by the official football bodies such as the FAI.

In 2023 the Irish women’s soccer team qualified for the World Cup for the first time. This coincided with the 50th anniversary of the first game played by the Irish national team in Wales in 1973. The game at the time was not recognised by the FAI and the women retrospectively were given their caps 50 years later.

However the FAI kept no record of this game. Linda Gorman, who played on the team, and researcher Helena Byrne tracked down the players using personal material from the players on the team. This shows how little value the women’s team were seen to have up until recently

Linda Gorman played in the first Away game in Wales, and the first Home game against Northern Ireland in 1973. She managed the Republic of Ireland team in 1991. She is still involved in football to this day.

All the hurdles in the way- lack of a pitch to train on, lack of kits, no changing facilities and no support from the official bodies or general public- still didn’t stop the girls determined to play the beautiful game. This documentary seeks to understand what conditions were like for the players at the time and what motivated them to keep going. It will be told from the perspective of Linda Gorman . The documentary will follow Linda’s journey, as she and some of her fellow players from the first home game will visit the pitches where they first played and trained.

The documentary will be a trip down memory lane for some of Ireland's forgotten sporting heroes.

The pitch

To tell this story, we need your help!

We need to raise some money to pay for equipment, transport costs, sound design, and applications for film festivals.

If you think this story deserves to be told, we would really appreciate any contribution you could make towards these costs. Every little helps!

Thank you for taking the time to learn about our project and we really appreciate the support!

Check out our fundraising event on Friday April 12th here!

Thank you very much,

Naoise and Siriana

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Photo credit: Simon Harsent