Hannah Noonan Interview
- Sep 03,2015
We Are Dublin chat to Dublin's Hannah Noonan ahead of Dublin's All Ireland Semi-Final against Armagh on Saturday in Parnell Park (2 pm)
Londoner Hannah Noonan who fulfilled her lifetime dream by moving to Ireland to play for Dublin and has been a revelation for both the girls in blue and her club Foxrock Cabinteely.
Interview:
WAD: So Hannah how are you finding your first season with playing with Dublin?
HN: Yeah its brilliant I am glad I did it, it’s extremely competitive and extremely tough but you get a buzz out of it and you end up loving it, it becomes your life here and I am very lucky we’ve got a great management team and the girls are very close knit so from a couple of weeks after joining you feel like you have been there a lot longer than you actually have so I have really enjoyed it.
It’s definitely one of the best decisions I have made in terms of obviously giving up the job and I basically came over in the hopes of playing at the best level and I was lucky that I got asked to play for Dublin quite quickly after moving over.
But yeah its brilliant its very competitive and it really makes you completely change your lifestyle and the way you think it becomes every part of your day, what you’re eating and completely making sure you have complete preparation for games and for training, we are given everything to try ad achieve what we want to achieve this year.
WAD: What has impressed you most about Greg as a Manager and the set up in Dublin?
HN: I just think that what’s great about it is that players get to be players, obviously coming from London and playing for London it’s a very different set up and you have to make different sacrifices and players have to try and help raise money and they are thinking of so many different things other than their game.
So I think that with Greg and the management they have schedules and times set out for us, which means you don’t have to think, it’s all done for you and I think that kinda shows with how successful we have been this year cos your focus is completely on yourself and what you are going to do to become better.
They are very approachable as well, say if you are trying to see what you need to do to get into that team,they are happy to have those conversations with you, it’s not a them and us its very much a whole team thing and there is no massive divide between management and players.
But they are very professional, they are not there to be your friend and they can be ruthless as well, and depending on what side you are on it can be hard to take, but that’s part of it if you are playing at the best level, you need to be able to take the highs with the lows.
I think that’s what’s so good about Dublin, people are getting dropped, I have been dropped you know and people aren’t making that starting team, but it never shows that you have less value than other players.
I think that’s what makes us so close and people really genuinely care about each other so yeah it’s nice to be just a “player†and be left to your own devices as opposed to having to think about training and the rest of it so.
WAD: Hannah you have had a very good season with Foxrock and Dublin this year and you made major contributions to both, did you imagine it would be that successful when you came over first?
HN: I knew it was gonna be hard, obviously when you are playing in a team for so many years in your home town you are already established, in London people know how I played, people know who you are it’s a very small community over there and then you come over here and you are a very small fish in a big ocean.
Foxrock was the team I was gonna join purely because I came up against them with my home team and I knew one of the girls I was in Boston with her and I also knew they had a very professional set up with their management, they are trained and behave much like a county team and that appeals to you if you have given up your job and you have given up a life in London.
And you want to come over and play as seriously as you possibly can and it’s the best decision I made to play for Foxrock they are an outstanding bunch of girls and have some serious serious footballers.
I think for me it suits me down to the ground cos there are players from all different parts of Ireland, I suppose I just make it that little bit different by being that player from overseas as well.
Yes Dublin has also been successful, obviously we still have some work to do and the same with Foxrock, we are not looking beyond the Semi Final with Dublin at the minute and we are fully aware that Armagh are training hard and they are gonna be a difficult team to beat.
But we know if we concentrate on ourselves and not worry about anything else and we get our game right we will be a difficult team to stop. I think on the day the only people that will beat us will be ourselves, if we underperform it will be purely down to ourselves as opposed to anyone else coming out there and actually beating us.
So yes it’s been successfully so far but even with Foxrock we have much more to do and again we are just going to take each game as it comes.
WAD: Big game on Saturday, what do you expect Armagh to bring to the table?
HN: I think it’s gonna be tough, they are a very very good team, they obviously will have had their homework done on us and our management will have done our homework on them but again I would say it’s going to be a physical game and I would say it’s gonna be a quick game.
The intensity of ladies football in the last few years has risen and mentally it’s a completely different game to what it used to be.
Fitness levels of individuals are outstanding and I think that that makes for an exciting game whoever you are playing against.
I think Saturday's game will be physical I don’t think it will be one team running away with it, it’s gonna be tit for tat the whole way which is how you want any semi-final to be.
I think they are gonna come at us all guns blazing but we are focusing on ourselves and we will be in the right mind set and we will be ready for them, we are not concentrating too much on them we are just trying to concentrate on getting our own game right.
WAD: Hannah what do you think its going to take for Dublin to get over the line on Saturday, what do you think Dublin will have to do?
HN: I think work rate from one to thirty and that’s one thing that will stand to us, the fact that every single player no matter what number they are wearing on their back will come in and they will do a job.
There are girls who may contribute for ten minutes or for twenty but however long they contribute they are gonna go in there and have the mind set of doing everything they can to push us over the line.
I think we just need to concentrate on our own game and just stick to what we know and what we have been practicing and I think if we stick to our game plan and stick to playing the way we know we can play I think the only team that will beat us on the day will be ourselves.
WAD: What’s the future hold for Hannah Noonan?
HN: At the minute I am not sure, in a way I wish I done this a couple of years earlier when I always said I would but never quite got up the courage to do it.
I'm possibly going travelling next year and I do think for me it’s a one year thing with Dublin and as much as I would love to give it another year or two years, it’s different or me you know, I’m not from here and I haven’t got my family around me and my job in England is there for me if I want it.
It’s a life I have loved living over here, but its very different for me in terms of I have given up a lot and I haven’t had the same kind of support around me that other people have, my mom’s not washing my clothes or cooking my dinners and I have seen my family very little this year and I think families are important.
So for me it is a year thing but for Dublin and Foxrock I’m gonna do everything that I can, cos you know I would like to give as much to the Dublin jersey as I would any jersey, they are my team and I am very much a part of that, I would like to go all the way with the girls.
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