Republic of Ireland defender Megan Campbell has announced her decision to retire from professional football.<\/p>\n
Campbell has been without a club since leaving London City Lionesses at the end of last season following their promotion to the WSL.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old won 57 caps for Republic of Ireland after making her senior debut in August 2011 against Switzerland.<\/p>\n
Campbell, who could play left back or centre back, was a member of the Irish squad that qualified for the 2023 Women’s World Cup, but she missed the tournament through injury.<\/p>\n
Renowned for her long throw ins, she holds the Guinness world record for performing the longest ever throw-in by a female footballer, 37.55 metres.<\/p>\n
The Drogheda native had spells at clubs such as Manchester City, Liverpool and Everton.<\/p>\n
She won a domestic treble at City and also helped Liverpool win promotion back to the WSL in 2022.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a while coming…but something I’ve struggled accepting for a long time now. Unfortunately, I knew that playing the sport I love and have given everything to would have an end some day, I just never wanted to believe it would’ve been this soon,” Campbell posted on social media.<\/p>\n
“To Ireland. This one’s the hardest to accept. Representing my country was the single biggest achievement in life. An honour above all else for me and my family,” Campbell continued. <\/p>\n
“It all meant more to me than you could imagine. Many memories, nights to remember forever and friends made for life.<\/p>\n
“This is the greatest sport in the world, and I am so lucky to have got to play it for as long as I have.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republic of Ireland defender Megan Campbell has announced her decision to retire from professional football. Campbell has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-212913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}