New manager Stephen Lally believes significant potential exists in the Galway WFC squad ahead of his first fixture in charge against WNL table toppers Peamount United on Saturday at PLR Park (6pm ).
An understrength Galway outfit lost a 3-4 thriller to Athlone Town last weekend at Eamonn Deacy Park, but Lally is adamant about the ability in the west of Ireland.
Having watched several of the current squad progress to the senior game, Lally is hopeful about making an impact. "I've been involved as a head coach with the Galway & District League so I've seen some of them and helped a lot of them with the Gaynor Cups,” Lally says.
“I've seen a lot of the girls coming through, I have coached many of them. Many years ago I was involved with the Galway ladies with some of the faces still there. The potential is huge. The players are there, the squad is there.”
Indeed Lally enjoyed a productive spell in charge of the Galway & District League women's team guiding them to FAI Cup glory in 2007 and subsequently into European competition. “About a year or two after being involved with Galway United, I got involved with the Oscar Traynor side with the Galway FA and they asked me to take on the ladies, to do the same thing as the men's,” Lally recalls.
“I hadn't been involved in ladies football at all, but the experience was massive. We had some great players back then - Niamh Fahey, Meabh De Burca, Julieanne Russell, quality players, who were in the Irish squad. They asked me to come on board.
“In that time it was a knockout competition. You had local clubs, you picked players from each club. We won the FAI Cup which qualified us for Europe.”
Galway embarked on an interesting adventure under Lally’s stewardship. “We had to go to Sarajevo,” Lally says.
“We had to play in a competition with four teams, if you qualified out of the group you'd have been in the last 16 of Europe. No Irish team before then had ever got a point.
“We ended up drawing our first game, winning our second game, and going into the final game knowing we only needed a draw to go into the last 16.
“That was without Niamh [Fahey], who had signed for Arsenal in between us winning the cup and us playing in Europe. It would have been ironic if we qualified we would have been in the same group as Arsenal. They were really good times.”
