Peamount face Shels in massive WNL title race clash
By Daire Walsh
WHILE there may well be plenty of twists and turns between now and the end of the season, Peamount United star Karen Duggan insists it is imperative that her side garners a positive result from their Women’s National League top-of-the-table clash with Shelbourne at PRL Park on Saturday (kick-off 6pm).
Currently two points adrift of their Dublin rivals – albeit with a game in hand – James O’Callaghan’s charges will be looking to show they mean business in their quest to a third consecutive WNL title.
“We need to get a positive result, we all know that,” acknowledged Duggan. “We’re not playing for draws or hoping that other teams will do us a favour.
“If we want to win the league, we need to take it into our own hands and beat the teams that are up there at the top with us,” she told The Echo.
Before overcoming Treaty United in the FAI Women’s Cup quarter-final last weekend, Peamount played out a 1-1 draw with Wexford Youths in their most recent league encounter.
This result helped to keep the Slaneysiders in the hunt for silverware (they are six behind Shels and also have a game in hand) and Duggan expects the three-pronged race to go right down to the wire.
“It’s looking that way and I suppose that’s good for the league. We’re obviously a little bit disappointed with some of the points we’ve dropped, but it’s hard to keep things going three years in-a-row. Other teams are improving.
“They’re trying to figure us out, having won it the last two years. It’s really, really tight between us, Shelbourne and Wexford. You can tell from the results of our head-to-head games, that there’s very little between us,” she pointed out.
Although it was the furthest thing from their minds, Women’s Super League outfit Birmingham City have forced both Peamount and Shels into a reshuffle of their respective packs.
Ahead of their campaign opener against Tottenham Hotspur last weekend, the West Midlands club recruited Eleanor Ryan-Doyle (Peamount) and Emily Whelan (Shelbourne) to their first-team squad.
As much as it is a blow to lose players of this calibre, the strength in depth remains strong in both camps.
In the absence of Whelan, Shels were able to recall Saoirse Noonan for a Cup showdown with her former club Cork City last Saturday and she responded by claiming the only goal of the game.
Having made a new home for herself at the heart of the Peamount defence, Duggan knows she will need to be on her toes to curtail the influence of Noonan.
“It was really good recruitment by Shelbourne. They were obviously able to offer her [Noonan] a lot coming up and she’s doing really well for them.
“She’s another person on a list of a lot of potential attacking threats that we’ll face. We’ll do our best to stand up to that and hopefully nullify it. Then hopefully the talent that we have further up the pitch will do the business for us,” Duggan added.