Cristiano Ronaldo, Raul and Karim Benzema all featured, it was 21 July 2009 and Nicola Coffey was just over three months into her new role at Tallaght Stadium.
In the intervening 17 years as Stadium Manager, she watched Shamrock Rovers return to prominence winning seven League of Ireland titles.
There was also the rise of the Irish women’s football team, culminating in qualification to the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.
In March she joined Shelbourne as Chief Operating Officer, where she oversees the daily operations while she is also responsible for the operational strategy, facilities and compliance at the club.
The former Ireland international cricket player, also has a young family but has maintained her sporting endeavours away from work too. She still plays golf and will feature in Golf Ireland’s first ever East of Ireland Women’s Amateur Open Championship at her own Woodbrook this weekend.
“We’re absolutely honoured to have it,” said Coffey.
“When you see the players that are coming, you’ve got Anna Dawson, Kate Lanigan, Anna Abom, it’s a really strong field and we’re delighted.
“It’s also Woodbrook’s centenary year, which is brilliant and I’ve been involved in reinvigorating the women’s scratch cup about 10 or 15 years ago.
“That scratch cup is going and being replaced by the East, and it’s just great to see the progression.
“It’s a great honour for us as a club to host the inaugural East.”
Coffey grew up in Monkstown and attended Mount Anville in Goatstown, where she played cricket and netball.
She loved sport and went to UCD to study Sports Management, graduated in 2004 and followed up with a Master’s in Occupational Safety and Health.
Cricket was her main sport at the time, she played for Pembroke and represented Ireland for five years, making it all the way to a World Cup.
“It was brilliant and a fantastic opportunity. I got to travel, played a couple of European championships, World Cup qualifiers,” said Coffey.
“The team aspect of the cricket, when you’re 16, it drew me to it. I do regret it now that I didn’t play a little bit more golf, but I had some really good experiences.
“I had to choose between cricket and golf because I couldn’t play both and stopped playing golf for a while, played lots of cricket.
“I got my first senior cap with Ireland in 2002, it was World Cup qualifiers, and I went to the World Cup in 2005 in South Africa, which was an amazing experience.”
Coffey began to work in golf that year too, at Golfing Dimensions as a Business Development Manager, and she joined up with Carr Golf in October 2006.
There were hopes of becoming a teaching professional but working as Operations Manager there opened up the opportunity to work in a different sport three years later.
“I was a few months into the job and it was absolutely mental because you not only had Ronaldo, you had the end of the Galactico era from Real Madrid in Tallaght,” said Coffey.
“Raul, Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Pepe, there was all these players you’d watched on the telly and in various teams in the years before that, so that was great.
“It was a Rovers game, but the stadium being owned by South Dublin County Council, who I worked and managed the stadium for, the various agencies got together in the planning because we had fundamentally, a 3,000 seater stadium and we were wedging 12,000 people into it.
“We were closing roads for an area that had never really hosted big events. It wasn’t in the Aviva or Croke Park, who are used to masses of people, this was all new for Tallaght.
“It was new for all of us, there was a lot of planning that went into it and it was a fantastic experience.”
During her time in Tallaght she managed the stadium during its expansion and a full UEFA compliance upgrade.
It was a time when Shamrock Rovers had their Europe adventures, along with big internationals for the Irish women and U21s.
Shelbourne also used Tallaght for their Conference League ties, and now Coffey makes the short trip across the Liffey each morning to Drumcondra for work.
The 2024 League of Ireland champions are going through a significant transition at the moment, with €9.2 million in funding recently approved for the club and the Tolka Park Community Hub project.
“I was very settled in Tallaght, it was a really, really good role,” said Coffey.
“Shelbourne caught my eye. I’d worked with the club for their European games last year when they played in Tallaght and from a selfish point of view, in terms of my own career progression to move into a COO role with the team, and seeing what they have behind them, who they have behind them, there’s a really good progressive setup.
“It was one of those opportunities that I knew I’d kick myself if I didn’t go for it, and I was fortunate enough to apply and be successful.
“The role itself is slightly broader, in that my role in Tallaght was primarily stadium and infrastructure, whereas this is more of a club-based role. It’s an overall role within the football club, not just the infrastructure side of things.
“It’s been a really good experience, really good learning curve, absolutely enjoying it and they’re really, really good people to work with and work for.”
Leave a comment