Sligo Rovers midfielder Gemma McGuinness belief in her team’s performances and abilities were vindicated following a massive 2-0 win at home to Cork City on Saturday.
An early Emma Doherty strike was finished off by a McGuiness second handed the Bit O’Reds a big win in the Women’s National League. The clean sheet was the side’s first this season.
The McGuinness goal was her second in as many games after netting against DLR Waves a week ago. The goal topped off a great week for the Donegal native as she was included in the team of the week for her performance and contribution against the Waves.
Speaking to FinalWhistle prior to last Saturday’s win, McGuiness remained confident during Sligo’s form insisting her side “knew what they have to improve on.” She was vindicated by her words as the win was Sligo’s fourth of the season.
As the season has progressed, Sligo have continued to impress even if the results may not show. Even though they are a brand new team, each week they are continuing to grow stronger and stronger and gel together. McGuinness believes it is their closeness as a group that has helped the team gel so well.
“I think that connection is so important and it really shows on the pitch. That is credit to the backroom team for understanding how important that is. It is nice to see how well we are gelling, maybe the results aren’t showing, but I can feel in the future that’ll improve itself.
“The majority of the girls didn’t know each other when we first started so to look back and see how far we have come, it is nice.”
McGuinness signed for Sligo after coming back from Vietnam, having lived there for two years teaching science. Upon arriving home at the tale end of 2021, she went back training with Derry City for a few sessions. In addition to this, she was asked would she be interested in going down to Sligo for a session, and afterwards she was impressed with the standard.
“As soon as I went to that session, the standards were quite different to Derry. I felt like that is where I wanted to play if I was going to play seriously. I wanted it to be a good set up and a strong standard set.”
The Donegal native believed her football was coming to an end prior to her Vietnam trip. She was out of action when she was in university for two years. That was due to Coleraine University where she attended not having a women’s football team.
“My Uni didn’t actually have a football team. I had to travel to Jordanstown in Belfast in final year when I found out I could play football there. That is something that brought me back to football. It gave me a lot more motivation to try reach the level I was at underage.”
McGuinness knew towards the end of her time in Vietnam that she wanted to get back into competitive football.
“I wanted to get back into that competitive setting.”
McGuinness praised the standard of the WNL as there are a lot of internationals in the league. As well as the standard, she believes the media attention and publicity and the rise in popularity in women’s football in Ireland is only a good thing.
Previewing the match against Cork, she said: “We know we can perform if we have the right mentality.”
The result sees Sligo jump into 7th spot, two points ahead of Bohs but, five behind Waves. The Sligo outfit travel to bottom side Treaty United this coming Saturday evening looking to make it two wins out of two. They and McGuinness will be hoping she can continue her recent goal scoring form.
