“We need to be doing better” – Curtin

New Treaty United coach Marie Curtin has expressed her concern about the flow of talent out of the Women’s National League, particularly to similarly sized countries like Scotland.

Speaking on the Final Whistle Women’s National League podcast this week, the Limerick native who played in both the USA and Norway prior to playing in all ten seasons in the WNL spoke about

“When you see players going over to play in Scotland, I think ‘Well done for you, brilliant!’ but I really don’t think as a league we should be losing players to Scotland. For a country that’s a similar size and a similar culture, we need to be doing better.”

However the Republic of Ireland international, who earned 55 caps during her senior career, spoke about the positive changes which have been noticeable in the coverage of the league.

For the first time in the league there’s been so much more in the media, so much more focus on women’s sport. You can attribute a lot of that to the 20×20 campaign by the Federation of Irish Sports. That’s been absolutely huge.

“The next thing that we need to see is sponsorship, it’s great to see SSE Airtricity coming in this year, but we need to work out how to make this league really attractive to people in the football world and outside of it.

“We need to make this league accessible, podcasts, digital marketing, we need to get more clips of our players, videos of goals, shots, saves and getting to know our players.”

Curtin will be part of the coaching staff for Treaty United in the WNL this season who start their campaign with a trip to the Oscar Traynor Centre to face Bohemians.