There were times when Lily Agg would have been forgiven for assuming an international career with Ireland just wasn't meant to be.
She remembers seeing a missed call on her phone after a game with London City Lionesses. She checked the voicemail and it was Vera Pauw inviting her along to the next Irish camp. "I rang her back, thanked her, said I'd be honoured, but, unfortunately, I'd just fractured a bone in my knee."
Twice more problems with the knee forced her to decline call-ups, including for February’s Pinatar Cup in Spain. “It was gutting,” she says, “but Vera said she’d keep an eye on me, not to rush the injury. She was funny, she said I reminded her of herself, a tough cookie, that I’d be back.”
The one time she was able to hook up with the squad, in April of last year, there was no prospect of a first cap because she didn’t have her Irish passport yet, Covid slowing down the process.
But it finally arrived, so when Pauw named the 28-year-old in her squad for next week’s World Cup qualifier away to Sweden, it was with some relief that Agg was able to accept the invitation.
“It’s been a long time coming,” she says. “My mum was extremely emotional when I rang her to tell her. She talked about how proud Grandma would be looking down on us.”
Grandma was Breda Greene, a Cork woman whose place of birth popped up in a chat between Agg and Lisa Fallon when Fallon was briefly her manager at London City in 2020.
“It was just a jokey thing, Lisa said to me ‘have you got any Irish connections?’ I said, ‘my grandma, my mum, all that side are Irish’. So she was like, ‘oh my God, do you have your Irish passport?’ So it just started from there. I think Lisa made Vera and the Irish staff aware of me, and they’ve just been following me since.
“And I was always really aware of my Irish connections, we used to go over to Cork quite a bit as kids. And when Grandma was over she would come and watch me play football. She died when I was 11, cancer, she was so young, just 60, but I have very fond memories of her.”
Agg was born in Brighton, the roots of her surname still a mystery to her. “I need to look in to it,” she says. “Agg was Mum’s married name, so that’s Dad’s side, but I’m unsure of where the name came from.” (The Google machine says it arrived in England from France, not today nor yesterday – in 1066, to be exact).
She really doesn’t know where her passion for football came from either, all she remembers is wanting to play from when she could walk. She started out with a local boys’ club at six, promoted from the C to A team on her first day, before moving on to Brighton’s centre of excellence.
Then she was snapped up by Arsenal for their academy, and an international call-up followed, Agg representing England from under-15 up to under-19 level.
Back at Arsenal she was good enough to be allowed train with the senior squad, which allowed her get to know the Irish contingent of Emma Byrne, Yvonne Tracy and Ciara Grant. "Ciara used to be one of our on-site security guards when we went out to London Colney, she was in charge of us. I loved the three of them, they were all so helpful towards the younger players."
Opportunities were limited, though, in a squad jammed with internationals, so Agg returned to Brighton where she combined her football with studying at the local university to become a PE teacher.
Since then, she has played for a number of English clubs and had a year in Germany with FFC Frankfurt before returning to England where she has been with London City in the Championship since 2019.
She has kept up her PE teaching, lecturing 16-to-18 year old boys in an Essex college in the mornings, and training in the afternoons five days a week with her club. She loves coaching too, so will start her Uefa B licence in May.
For now, though, the attacking midfielder’s chief goal is to make her debut for Ireland. “I do feel I have some good attributes that could really contribute to the team. I’m a bit of a workhorse, I put myself about the pitch, and I have an eye for goal. I’m going to work as hard as I can, I would take on any role that Vera would like me to fill.”
She already feels comfortable in the squad, several of the players no strangers to her. She got to know Diane Caldwell when they were both in Germany, she played alongside Lucy Quinn at university level in England, she knew Ruesha Littlejohn from their time at Arsenal, and Hayley Nolan and Ali Murphy, while not called up this time, are London City team-mates.
“Women’s football is quite a small world,” she laughs. “I was a little anxious when I first came in, but the girls have been good as gold, they made sure I felt really welcome.”
“They’re so driven, so hungry to qualify, they’re all willing to do whatever it takes to make that possible. If I can be part of that, in any way at all, that’s all I want. If I get to make my debut some time, it would be a really emotional and a proud day for me. I’d like to think I’d be making my grandma proud.”
