Rachel Graham has backed Republic of Ireland striker Saoirse Noonan to find the right landing spot after ending her prolific spell at Celtic.
The Cork native has left the Hoops after the expiry of her contract and it comes at an intriguing juncture with the 26-year-old aiming to cement her place in Carla Ward’s squad for the World Cup play-offs and potentially next summer’s tournament in Brazil if the Girls in Green qualify.
Former Cork City and Shelbourne forward Noonan scored over 50 goals for Celtic since joining from Durham two years ago.
But now she will have to choose her next destination carefully with her Ireland career in mind.
And she “won’t be short of offers”, according to Shelbourne and former Ireland midfielder Graham.
“I think Saoirse is a clever person as well. She’s obviously done it right where she was at Shels and then went to Durham and then Celtic. She’s taken a step up and a step up,” she told the RTÉ Soccer Podcast.
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“And she was very career-driven. I don’t think she’d be interested in, say, ‘I’ll go to Spain for a year and I’ll experience life there and I’ll take a step down quality wise’.
“I think she’s career driven and wants to be playing at the best level that she can be. So I think her preference would probably be England’s WSL1 if she can – maybe not WSL2 – one of the top teams there.
“So I think from knowing her when she was at Shels, I think that would be in her mindset.
“America is obviously just far away, like we’ve seen Denise (O’Sullivan) come back now to focus on her career with Ireland.
“Time will tell, but definitely, I don’t think she’d be short of offers.”
Noonan has excelled for Celtic but Graham believes she will be seeking a more testing challenge than the Scottish league to take her game forward.
“She’s scored bags of goals for Celtic, so I don’t think it’s case that Celtic didn’t want to keep her. I think it’s probably just she feels it’s time to move on, maybe a new challenge,” she said.
“And if we are getting to Brazil and she’s looking at her international career, she’s probably someone that doesn’t feel really safe in the squad where, say we do get to Brazil (and) we do qualify, she’s probably thinking ‘I might have a 50-50 chance whether I go or not’.
“So I think for her, she might need to make a bit of a more challenging move. Is it to England? Is it to somewhere in Europe?
“I think it’s time to maybe step up and get maybe a tougher club.”
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