“For me, if it wasn’t for football, I’d be in a completely different place. Where I grew up in Sheriff Street, heroin took a number of my friends, and drugs hit my family too. I saw people dying from it and knew I didn’t want that life.”
In the 1980s and 1990s, heroin coursed through the veins of Dublin’s inner city. In Sheriff Street, it felt like a permanent fixture. Poverty and unemployment fed its grip, and every corner seemed to be its market. For kids growing up there, the choices felt stark: get caught in its pull or find another way out. Olivia O’Toole, a girl with a ball and a dream, chose the latter.
“For me, if it wasn’t for football, I’d be in a completely different place,” O’Toole says now. “Where I grew up in Sheriff Street, heroin took a number of my friends, and drugs hit my family too. I saw people dying from it and knew I didn’t want that life.”
To look at her career—54 international goals, 130 caps, eight FAI Cups, nine league titles—is to see one of the most dazzling figures Irish football has ever produced. But those numbers don’t tell you the half of it.
The Streets That Made Her
It began with a football and a six-year-old girl kicking it around the flats of Sheriff Street. Her father had introduced her to the game, but it was the streets that taught her its rhythm. “I constantly had a football in my hand,” she says. “I learned the game on the streets. My dribbling, skills, and passion all come from the streets, and if you look at the best players out there, they all came from the streets. You can’t beat it.”
By 11, O’Toole was playing for Sheriff Boys, a boys’ team where she would stay until 15. And even as she stood out, she wasn’t always welcome. One match in Phoenix Park saw her go up for a ball and accidentally bust an opponent’s nose. “It resulted in a bit of a scuffle, and he wanted to hit me,” O’Toole remembers. “My manager shouted, ‘Don’t hit her.’ That’s when they all realised I was a girl.”
That moment sparked complaints and eventually a legal battle. The result? A rule change allowing girls to play with boys until under 16. O’Toole’s presence forced the system to adapt, even as it left her in limbo. At 16, she was told she could no longer play with the boys. The alternative? Drumcondra Ladies, where she would line up against women twice her age.
“I was by far the youngest, and it was scary,” she says. “But at the same time, I just wanted to play football, so it didn’t faze me.”
From Sheriff Street to Seville
O’Toole’s national team journey began at 19 with trials at Santry. “Five hundred girls came out that weekend,” she recalls. “It was whittled down to 200, then 50, and then finally I got picked.” By 1991, she was wearing the green jersey in a European Championship qualifier against Spain. On her debut, she scored the winner in a 1-0 victory in Seville.
“The thing that really hit me was standing there singing the National Anthem,” she says. “There’s nothing like it—the hairs on the back of your neck standing up.”
But this was an era where opportunities for women in football were limited to the point of invisibility. Growing up, O’Toole didn’t even know Ireland had a women’s national team. “When I was growing up, there was nothing for girls. There were no underage girls’ football leagues, no underage national teams—just a senior team. The Women’s League at the time only consisted of seven teams, and that was a league in Dublin. It was the only league in the country at the time.”
The Game’s Inequalities
Playing for Ireland in the 1990s meant not just representing your country but navigating a system that seemed to actively obstruct you. The women’s team endured conditions that bordered on the absurd. “Every single Ireland tracksuit I had never fitted me,” O’Toole says. “We had to get changed in toilets, at the airport, or even on the bus on the way into matches.”
After games, swapping jerseys with the opposition was discouraged. Jerseys weren’t souvenirs; they were inventory. “We weren’t allowed to even keep our own jerseys. We had to give them back. I used to be sly though. I used to exchange it with an opposition player because I knew they wouldn’t go asking it back from them.”
The indignities didn’t end there. Publicity for matches was an afterthought, with posters distributed on the day of games. “I remember once I got handed posters on the day of the match. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘What am I supposed to do with this now? We’re playing today.’”
The One That Got Away
In 2008, Ireland came within touching distance of a major tournament. A playoff against Iceland for a place at the European Championships ended in heartbreak, not just because of the result but the conditions. “The pitch was like an ice rink,” O’Toole says of the second leg. “There’s no way that game should have gone ahead, but I felt because we were ‘only Ireland,’ they forced us to play.”
Ireland lost 3-0, slipping and sliding out of contention. “That’s was the only real chance I had to go to a major tournament, and I won’t lie to you, I did cry tears over it.”
A Legacy Beyond the Numbers
O’Toole retired at 41, leaving behind a glittering record: 54 goals, eight FAI Cups, nine league titles. Her brilliance—her ability to ghost past defenders, her low center of gravity—drew comparisons to Ryan Giggs. “If I was 23 now, I’d be playing for Man United,” she laughs.
Yet O’Toole’s story is about more than numbers. It’s about what she represented for Irish football at a time when the system offered so little support. It’s about resilience in the face of neglect, about a girl from Sheriff Street who refused to let her circumstances define her.
Now, at 49, O’Toole is preparing to coach St. Patrick’s YC in the newly founded Eastern Women’s Football League. The game has changed dramatically since her playing days. Professional contracts, sports science, and nutritionists are now the norm. “We were just given a ball and played,” she says. “The first time I ever heard of a nutritionist was 15 years into my career.”
Her story, though, remains a reminder of where the women’s game has come from—and how much further it still has to go. “The biggest winners from this deal are the future young girls of Ireland,” O’Toole says. “They now have an equal opportunity and an equal chance to fulfill their footballing dreams.”
