A Chloe McCarron wonder strike helped Northern Ireland women’s boss Kenny Shiels put a frustrating statistic to bed in Thursday’s 3-1 friendly win over the Faroe Islands.
Sam Kelly and Sarah McFadden were also on target in a comfortable victory at the Marbella Football Centre in the first of three training camp outings in Southern Spain.
McCarron’s was the pick of the bunch, the Glentoran midfielder picking the ball up 25 yards from goal before arrowing an unstoppable effort into the top corner.
Remarkably, it helped deliver a first win in six friendly outings for Shiels who otherwise boasts an impressive 63 percent win record in competitive games as national boss since his appointment in 2019.
McCarron, whose first goal in green was also a screamer against the same opposition in a European qualifier in 2020, joked: “I’ve always said, if the ball was sitting on the line, I’d never score it!
“It always seems to be the long distance ones that go in but if it’s going to happen, happy days. I just saw the net and I had to have a pop.”
Shiels said: “It was a really good strike from Chloe and I think it’s the first friendly I’ve won in about 20 years as a manager!
“That’s because we usually treat it as an opportunity to experiment, which we did a lot of against the Faroes, but we also got the win which helps build morale.
“So many substitutions probably stopped the flow of the game, but it means we can now go into the Switzerland game with as strong a team as we have.”
Northern Ireland face the Swiss on Sunday and Romania on Wednesday as part of a 10-day training camp ahead of April’s vital World Cup qualifiers with Austria and England.
An historic first ever appearance at a major tournament at the Euro 2022 finals in England also lies in wait in the summer.
“We’ve measured ourselves against the Faroes and now we’ll go and measure ourselves against the Swiss,” said Shiels.
“It’ll be a really tough game on Sunday, but I’m really hopeful we’ll put in a performance.”
Glentoran’s Sam Kelly opened the scoring early doors, before Durham defender McFadden added a second in the 40th minute.
McCarron’s superb strike made it 3-0 on the stroke of half-time, before the Faroese bagged a consolation with a Lauren Wade own goal in the 74th minute.
- Video footage of Chloe McCarron's goal courtesy of the Irish FA.
