Amber Barrett looking forward after 'the hardest six months' she has ever had
LOOKING FORWARD: Amber Barrett during a Republic of Ireland women open training session at UCD Bowl. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
Denise O’Sullivan’s through ball. Amber Barrett’s caress of a first touch. The nudge ahead to steady herself. The slide-rule finish into the Scotland net. Eight months on and the goal that sent the Republic of Ireland to the World Cup has been named as the FAI's Goal of the Year.
Barrett still thinks about it a few times each week. How could she not? She knows how special a moment it was for her and for everyone else, but there is a determination with that to “move on” from the night in Hampden Park and look to the future.
The knowledge that there is a job to do now that Ireland are facing into a brutally tough pool Down Under isn’t the only thing framing that mood. Her inactivity at club level leaves her with work to do, in her own mind, to make that plane to Australia.
Her club, Turbine Potsdam, have a storied and successful past but finished bottom of the Frauen-Bundesliga having won just two of 22 games and Barrett hinted at a number of things that need to change at the club as they take stock now.
It was after a shoulder injury in December that her own problems mounted with a lack of game time and the fact that more of her few appearances were made at right-back rather than up front. Underlying all that was a frustrating lack of clarity from her superiors.
Several conversations with coach Marco Gebhardt didn’t result in any resolutions. Quite the opposite, in fact, and the 27-year old took note when she was ultimately one of the few players still under contract allowed to leave.
“It was really difficult. I definitely think this is the hardest six months I’ve ever had. It’s very difficult for me as someone who tries to think things quite straightforwardly when things are happening that I can’t understand.
“People would say, ‘oh, you scored the goal that got Ireland to the World Cup’, but that didn’t matter to me when I went back to Germany and I was sitting on the bench every week and we were getting beaten.”
Thankfully, that’s all behind her now. Standard Liege, where fellow Donegal native Fergal Harkin is Director of Football, made contact late last year and that sense of feeling wanted was in sharp contrast to the period of purgatory that was her lot in Germany.
Standard had tracked her career for some time and invited her to the club a few weeks ago. The visit went well, not least when the recruiters made sure to introduce her to some of the club’s most elevated staff and administrators.
“I just want to go playing football again,” Barrett explained. “Whether people think it’s a step down, it’s no good being in a top league and sitting on the bench. For me the most important thing is to be playing.”
For her, and for Vera Pauw too. The Ireland boss was a pillar of support and guidance through all this. Pauw was reassuring and made the point that she had to be enjoying her football. She also liaised with her striker on aspects of her training to ensure that Barrett still turned up sharp for national duties.
The scramble for a place up front in the Irish XI looks wide open but none of this is to say there are any guarantees that the Hampden hero will make that finalised squad when Pauw reveals her panel at the end of this month.
“Yeah, of course,” she agreed. “Everybody’s apprehensive. Thirty, 32 players are named in the training squad and every one of them wants to be in the 23. That’s going to be a lot of disappointed people.
“It’s not about what you did four or five years ago, it’s about what you’re doing now. In the run-up, you have to be playing, that’s where you get your confidence, your match sharpness, it’s where you get that little bit of self-belief. You’re used to being in front of goal all the time, playing in a competitive environment.”
Zambia in Tallaght on Thursday night would be a good place to start.
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