Yvonne Tracy is struggling to believe it’s a whole 18 years since she, Emma Byrne and Ciara Grant became the first – and only – Irish women to win the equivalent of the Champions League. That triumph topped off a magical 2006-07 quadruple-winning season for Arsenal, no English club winning Europe’s premier trophy, then called the Uefa Cup, before or since.
The bulk of the squad reunited at the Emirates Stadium last year when the club invited them as guests of honour for the women’s league game against Manchester United.
“We had some craic,” says Tracy. “I hadn’t seen most of the girls in 10 plus years, but it was like we’d never been apart. The laughs we had that day. We didn’t even go out to watch the second-half, we just sat inside in a lounge chatting. By 10 in the morning the girls were on the wine already. “Ah sure,” they said, “it’s ****ing five o’clock somewhere’.”
“They wanted us to do a lap of honour at half-time, which wasn’t really our thing. We only went as far as the corner flag, turned back, went upstairs again and carried on chatting. And laughing. It was brilliant to see the girls, we had the best of times together.”
Shamrock Rovers show their mettle, Duff’s gamble pays off – what we learned from Friday night’s League of Ireland action
Katie McCabe tastes Champions League glory as Arsenal stun Barcelona to clinch title
The full-time whistle blows for Lineker: Driven out, but he may be the one who wins in the long run
Yvonne Tracy hoping Katie McCabe can follow in her foosteps to be an Irish Champions League winner
They were invited to another reunion at Arsenal’s training ground last Tuesday where the plan was for them to meet up with the current squad ahead of their Champions League final against Barcelona on Saturday, when they will attempt to emulate that 2007 achievement.
“We only got the invite the Thursday before, but sure, most of us are working, so we couldn’t make it. I think about four turned up. They made a big deal of the whole thing, and offered us all a ticket for the game in Lisbon. That was it. Make your own way. Get your own flights, your own accommodation, but we’ll give you a ticket that you could buy for a tenner.”
The thing with Tracy, though, is that there’s next to no rancour when she contrasts her playing days with how the women’s game is now. A case in point. In the days before the second leg of Arsenal’s Uefa Cup final against Sweden’s Umea in 2007 (it’s a one-off final these days), a gang of reporters arrived from Ireland at the club’s training ground to talk to her, Byrne and Grant.
While the men’s squad rolled in and out of the car park in their Bugattis, Aston Martins, Bentleys and Ferraris, most with personalised number plates, she was working in the laundry at the ground, trying to top up her meagre wages so she could survive.
You tell her that people back home were horrified by that. Did she ever feel the same?
“Not at all! Everyone has to ****ing earn a living, like. And we were all earning so little as players, we had to find work outside the game. That was just the reality, women’s football was really only starting out. You couldn’t turn your nose up at it – you were working, you were getting fed at the Arsenal training ground. You were rubbing shoulders with the men’s team and you had Arsene Wenger coming in and having a chat with you. You were made to feel part of the Arsenal family. It was fine.”
And having spent 14 years playing for the club, during which she won close to 30 major honours, as well as over 70 Irish caps along the way, she was happy to stay on for “around another nine” after retiring. “My job was to get the kit ready for training and games, wash the match gear, that kind of thing. It was good. But the hours were mad and the wages were shite, so I was like, ‘I’m done. I’ve had enough of this‘.”
Coaching, she reckoned, was her route out of that grind, so after doing her Uefa B licence with the FAI back home, that’s the route she took. She does her own “one to one and group sessions” with players, and last year she was added to the staff at the Haverhill Football Academy in Suffolk, before being appointed head of their girls section last month.
“I absolutely love it because I just prefer working with kids. I work with a club too with under-18 boys and they asked me to move up with them when they reached the reserves, but I was like, ‘nah, thanks‘. I don’t really want to be working with men who think they know everything, I want to stay with the kids and help develop them, and, most importantly, make sure they have fun and enjoy it.”
“It’s funny, someone asked me if I had this kind of structure when I started out playing, and I was like, ‘are you mad?’ I was out in the green back in Limerick getting the s**te kicked out of me by all the boys. I said, you have to remember I’m 44 and there wasn’t nothing like this in my time. Most of the coaches I work with are in their 20s and they’re looking at me like, ‘****, she’s from the Stone Age’.”
“But I was never coached until I played for Ireland at underage level, when I was around 15, everything was self-taught until then, from playing on that green. And now you have young girls going to academies and development centres and they have everything available for them, which is really, really good.”
“The changes have been huge, and they went through the roof after England won the Euros in 2022. It just went bananas after that, the whole country was mad for it. There were thousands and thousands at games, but we have to be honest too, it’s been hit and miss. Unlike England, or, say, Arsenal and Chelsea, Manchester City are lucky to get two or three thousand at a match, and then you have stories like the Blackburn and Wolves’ women’s teams being left high and dry by their clubs. Just like in the men’s game, it’s a case of the haves and have nots.”
“But it’s always been a battle, so you just have to battle on. Back when we played Umea, Arsenal asked us if we wanted to play the second leg at the Emirates. We were, like, ‘no’ – not only because the pitch was bigger, but because we’d probably have got a maximum of 5,000 at the Emirates, a near empty stadium just rattling. It was a sell-out at Borehamwood, 3,500, it was our home. They’re expecting 50,000 in Lisbon on Saturday, that’s amazing.”
“But we were lucky to get a couple of inches in the papers back then, if that, and I’m not sure the game was even on telly. The young girls back home didn’t even know we were playing, there was hardly any coverage at all. Look at it now. At least one or two games on telly every week when the most we got was the FA Cup final. It’s brilliant to see how it’s grown. It’s a different world for the young girls I’m coaching, there are so many possibilities for them in the game now. And I love that.”
The possibilities seemed endless, too, when Tracy joined Arsenal in 2000. She was one of a sizeable gang of Irish players signed by the club back then.
“I went over with Caroline Thorpe and Susan Heapes, we were all playing for the Irish under-19s so they were really good pals. We were living with Emma, Ciara and Grainne Kierans, so we had great craic, you never felt home sick with that many Irish around you.”
“None of us could cook, it was all beans and spaghetti hoops on toast, but we’d eat at the training ground and that would set you up. We ended up in a three-bed flat with one bathroom, so we were living on top of each other, but then a few people left so it was grand. It was tough for some of the girls, either with homesickness or not getting their chances in the team, but myself, Emma and Ciara stuck it out. It’s only now when you look back on it, it’s like, yeah, we did do a bit, didn’t we? We did okay.”
While Byrne and Grant played in both legs of the 2027 final, Tracy remained on the bench, the latest in a series of knee injuries rendering her an onlooker. That was a heartbreaker for a player who had contributed so much to Arsenal becoming the dominant force in the English game.
“And to this day, my body is broken from playing football and having operations and injections. I’m actually waiting to get another operation done on my knee at the minute. I hurt it again when I was doing my Uefa B licence, tore my meniscus, so I’m on an NHS waiting list to have something done on it. I have an appointment for July, just to talk to a surgeon, but it’s been cancelled three times already. We’ll see how that goes.”
She was made to feel part of it all, though, back in 2007, her memories of both legs vivid. “We weren’t given a hope. Umea were professional, we weren’t. They were stacked with Swedish internationals, and had Brazil’s Marta, the best player in the world.”
“Even when we won the first leg away, 1-0, I think they thought they were going to beat us by four or five at Borehamwood. But, Jesus, Emma was just unbelievable in goal. There were balls hitting her head, coming off the crossbar, she was phenomenal. And Ciara was Ciara – quality like.”
The second leg finished 0-0, Arsenal were European champions, Tracy and her Irish comrades celebrating with the tricolour. “And that’s the best photo of the lot. My mother has it framed at home,” she says.
A little like 2007, Arsenal will be the rank outsiders on Saturday against a three-in-a-row seeking Barcelona side. “Ah jaysus, yeah,” says Tracy when you suggest Barca are half decent.
“But come here,” she says, “it’s a one-off game, anything can happen. Barcelona are brilliant, but Arsenal can be too. So ...”
So ... Katie McCabe can become the fourth Irish player to conquer Europe? “I bloody hope so! She’s as good as gold, Kate, I love her passion. People say she’s a bit arrogant and flashy on the pitch, but she’s not, it’s just her passion. She loves playing for her country and she loves playing for Arsenal. She has that fire, and you can’t beat that.”
“I’ll be cheering her on. I’ll be in Spain with my parents, watching it in a bar somewhere. And honest to God, no one will be happier if Katie does it. Emma, Ciara and myself will be rooting for her. Big time. Go on Katie!”
