When Planet Football was young, your average Arsenal v Liverpool game would have featured a gaggle of Irishmen. How many appeared in Saturday's FA Cup final? Divil a one. Happily, three Irish internationals appeared in last Monday's English women's FA Cup final - Emma Byrne and Ciara Grant for Arsenal and Ronnie Gibbons for Fulham - which was played at Selhurst Park in front of a crowd of 13,824, almost double the previous highest record for a women's match in England, including internationals.
Arsenal and Republic of Ireland goalkeeper Emma Byrne takes our player-of-the-week award for her display in the game which Arsenal won 1-0 (where have we heard that one before?), thanks in no tiny measure to her quite brilliant second half penalty save. And to top it all Byrne and Grant helped the club to the treble on Saturday by wrapping up the Premier League. And there was you thinking it was all gloom and doom down Highbury way.
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