[ Background ]

I’m from the west of Ireland, but moved to London a year and a half ago. I did a bachelor's of economics and then a master’s in finance in Dublin. After that I was offered a job in London and one in Dublin and I genuinely took the one in London because I knew it would bring me closer to football games. I was already spending so much time here, nearly every weekend flying from Dublin to London and I just didn’t have the money or time to keep doing that, so I decided, right, if I’m going to take football this seriously, I need to move to London.

I have been working in a finance company as a portfolio analyst and did all my football stuff on the side. I started creating content in my bedroom in Dublin while doing my masters and then as soon as I moved to London, I just hit the ground running. I met so many amazing people in person and since then have really grown and moved into different kinds of content creation, interviewing and presenting. I’m also trying to lean into my finance side and cover sport finance as well, which is really exciting.

The last year has been crazy in terms of opportunities and it’s only getting better, touch wood! A few weeks ago, I was able to leave my job and focus on football full time.

[ Did you also play football - or how did you get into football? ]

I come from a really, really sporty family, all of my uncles, brothers and my sister, we've all played football, rugby and Gaelic. My sister was the captain of our rugby team and our football team, my uncles were captains of their respective teams, so it’s always been in my DNA.

My dad was actually my first football coach! I think he was the one who really nurtured my love for football. I remember playing football since I was 4 or 5 and my dad bringing me down to training sessions and that sort of thing.

So, football has always been a part of me but in terms of women’s football, it was only 3 years ago at the last Women’s World Cup. Katie McCabe, the captain of Ireland, she’s from Dublin and I was living in Dublin and there were posters of her everywhere! As the World Cup went on I learned more about her story. At my work, we did a sweepstakes and were encouraged to watch the games and I realized, whoa, women are really good at football as well. Obviously, Katie plays for Arsenal, so I got into Arsenal Women’s and learned more about them and all their incredible stories and just ultimately fell in love with it. I had watched bits of women's football before, the big teams like the US and the last euros but that World Cup changed my life.

[ Were you active on social media in your personal life before focusing on sports content? ]

I think I was active in a normal sense, like, in the way that everyone's on Instagram and that, but to be honest, this whole thing completely happened by accident. I was watching a game and didn’t have any friends in real life to speak about it with, so for some reason, I thought, why don’t I just post a little TikTok about it? And the first one did really well and was filled with people in the comments also saying, ‘oh, I have no one else to speak about this with!’ I have always been frustrated with the way that women’s sport has been treated. Growing up, I would always see the men's football finals make the paper and the town would put up flags but for our women's football finals, it was different, there just wasn't that buzz around it. I remember one huge final we were in, we had to get changed on the bus as the changing rooms weren’t unlocked for us. That just wouldn’t happen in a men's game.

I was kind of posting out of frustration too. I love sports, I was annoyed that I wasn't introduced to women's football sooner. So, I posted another video and the more videos I posted, I became more confident, started new friendships and eventually, some people started looking to me as a kind of ‘news source’ and it’s just really taken off. But I never just woke up and ‘decided’ this is something I want to do, it was accidental and I just kept going. I really love doing it to be honest with you.

[ How does someone go from this initial beginning to full time creator working with some of the biggest brands? What does this ‘career progress’ look like? ]

It's been a very strange kind of evolution from just being in a room by myself and speaking to the camera and people online to now. At one point, I thought, why don’t I go to a game in real life and meet some people there? I kept making more connections and my confidence kept growing.

The majority of my work has been unpaid. It is almost the norm in this industry. I think about 80% of the things that I do are unpaid. I didn’t mind at the beginning because I was just happy to be a part of it and help the game grow but then it started to become more time consuming.

Eventually, different brands started reaching out to me, the likes of the FA in England, who I worked with on the FA Cup last year, that was incredible. Or DAZN, going out to Portugal and working with them on the Champions League or being out in Switzerland for the Euros with Adidas. It’s just been so surreal.

Then, it kind of came to a point where I was just taking so much time away from my full time job - which I kind of lost my passion for, it became stressful and was very much just something that was paying my bills and as soon as I was done, I could focus on the football work.

Then, slowly, football started to take off and when I got to the point where I had enough saved up, I kind of turned around, looked at my full-time job, it wasn’t giving me anything positive anymore. I know the majority of people don’t ‘like’ their full-time jobs, let’s be honest, but it got to a point where I was just dreading going into the office every day. It was definitely a toxic work environment and was really affecting me. I knew I needed to make this change.

So, I waited until I had enough saved up, and I had a healthy CV and portfolio to kind of make that decision - while I'm still young, I might as well just go out and take that risk.

[ Did your coworkers know about your content creation work or did you try to keep this private/separate from your ‘day job’? ]

I think they didn’t know. For context, I’m from rural Ireland, so someone who posts themselves online is just weird and really frowned upon. People around me were very much like, ‘when you move to London, don’t tell anyone and keep your online stuff very separate from your in-person stuff’. But I moved here and I realized people really don’t care, it’s completely different to being at home.

Even now, at home, some of my friends don’t know that I do content creation, and I want to keep it that way, because I know what they'll think, ‘Ally, come on, that's really strange, it's women's football’ and that sort of thing.

So I really made a conscious decision to keep the online stuff very different from my personal life and my ‘real world’ and I never told anyone at work about it until I left. And one of the women was just like, ‘why didn’t you tell us, this is amazing, you were on the BBC, or you interviewed this player, that’s incredible! Are you not proud of it?’ And, I am proud of it. But I think it’s just growing up with that kind of Irish mentality - people can have an opinion about you and kind of belittle you a bit but the more people I’ve met, the more people say what I’m doing is fantastic, it’s nice to have that reassurance.

[ What is the ‘process’ for working with some of these brands/companies? Do you reach out to them or do they come to you? ]

It has been a mix of me reaching out to them and them reaching out to me but I am very lucky to say that the majority have reached out to me. It could be something like, I put my email in my bio and they reach out that way, or they could just shoot into the DMs or something like that. But it’s also a case of networking. It is a really small industry and you bump into the same people all the time.

[ Do these companies reach out with a specific idea in mind, or do you have to then ‘pitch’ ideas? ]

So, both are common. For the Euros, for example, it was a case of them reaching out with something like, ‘hey, we’re thinking of going to the Euros, would you have any ideas? Please come back to us with a pitch of ideas’.

But it’s interesting, I’m at the stage now where brands are finally paying me but you have to do a lot of stuff unpaid. Often, that’s a brand reaching out and saying they’ll give you two free tickets to go to a game and shoot some content - you don’t get paid but it will look good on your CV, your LinkedIn, etc. So there’s an element of having to push yourself out there and do those unpaid jobs to finally get a paid one.

[ What do you think about the title ‘content creator’ vs. e.g. ‘journalist’? ]

That's a fantastic question. I think it's something people need to speak about a little bit more. A lot of people kind of look down on ‘content creation’ and think of someone off Love Island and that sort of thing. I don’t think I’ve ever fit into that box. I just see myself as someone who likes speaking to the camera about the stuff I’m passionate about. But also, I don’t want to be seen as ‘just’ that box - I am more than that, I love sports finance, I love interviewing, reporting and all that.

In terms of content creation vs journalism, in women’s football there are so many content creators and I see the same people popping up every now and again and notice that some people have changed their ‘title’ from content creator to journalist. But in my eyes, unless you have that journalist diploma and you went to university and you studied for it, you are not a journalist.

I’ve had people call me a journalist online before, and I think it’s quite offensive to people who have studied journalism, because I have not done that. It’s something I’d like to do in the future, but I think to call yourself a journalist, you need to be qualified and there’s so much that comes with that title, whereas a content creator, anyone can just whip out their phone and try that.

[ Do you have any idea who follows and interacts with your content? ]

It actually varies from platform to platform. Across most platforms, it’s mainly women aged 18 to 24 based in the UK, Ireland, Australia and Germany - which I thought was really interesting. So, it’s mainly just women around my age, trying to get into the sport or who just love the sport and want it to grow.

[ Do you feel competitiveness with other content creators/others in the football media space? ]

It's a tricky one, because at the start, when I was living in Ireland, I wasn't earning any money from it and it was just more of a passion project, so I didn't really look at or compare myself to other people.

But, I guess it’s a part of life that you start to do that - once I moved to London and started getting more opportunities, you see the same people all the time and you see what opportunities they’re getting and you do have that element of comparison and wondering what they’re doing that I’m not doing and that sort of thing.

Would I see it as ‘competition’? I don't know if I would say that - don’t they say comparison is the thief of joy? So you see someone getting an opportunity with a certain brand, or getting a certain amount of likes, and you want that and I think a lot of people in this space would call that competition. But I wouldn’t see it as competition. Maybe that’s because they’ve been relying on this as their income for longer than I have - maybe in a month or two, I might have a different answer! It is a small space and I am friends with the majority of creators. A win for them is a win for the women’s space, so I just want to see them getting opportunities knowing that they have worked so hard for it behind the scenes.

[ Most of your work is freelance or contract based - is this the ‘ideal’ or would you like to eventually have a full time role doing content with a company/organization? ]

If you had asked me that a year ago, I would have said that a full-time job is better, but I think I've done the whole full-time job, my finance job, the one I literally just left. I was in the office every day at 9am, leaving about 7pm, that was my life and I was doing the football stuff on top of that.

Now, having this kind of freelancing opportunity has really opened my eyes because it’s a Monday and I’m sitting in a room where there are windows! In my office job it was easy to forget that there was more than just the job. So, I’m really enjoying the freedom - if I want to go to the Emirates on a Wednesday for a shoot, I can do that. If I want to do something on a Friday, I can do that. I’m not limited to one workspace or one office - if you don’t like some people, that’s okay because tomorrow you’ll be working on something else. For me, right now, it's so exciting.

I obviously do have that worry that what if, two weeks from now, I get the flu and have to cancel some jobs or other really basic questions like can I get a pension from this? But for now, touch wood, I’m in a good place.

Still, I have friends who are in a very different situation and went freelance thinking it would go well, and unfortunately, it hasn’t and they’ve struggled to get back into a full-time role. It really varies from person to person, but I’m kind of lucky in a way because I’m not just a content creator, I can work with companies or football clubs on sports finance topics and can wear a few different hats.

[ A lot of people watch football or go on social media to ‘unwind’ from work - Is it difficult to switch off from your job? ]

I’m someone who needs to be busy. I'm a very anxious person. When I’m not busy, I genuinely start spiraling. So this has been amazing for me because I’m constantly busy.

But, for example, when I go home to Ireland and I’m at home with my family and I’m sitting in the kitchen on my phone, my mum is like, ‘come on Ally, get off your phone’ but I need to be on my phone because X game is on and this person has tweeted that - I have so many notifications on my phone - so I’m constantly clued in, there’s no downtime. Even last week, my girlfriend is also a content creator, and we were at Disneyland, and we had to keep taking breaks and get off rides to do posts!

I guess when you say it out loud, it does sound a bit unhealthy, but at the moment, it gives me so much structure and so much enjoyment. I think I’m someone who’s always needed a reason to get out of bed and a bit of validation to feel like you are good at something, and I think, because I finally found that, I’m just very happy to keep pushing it.

[ Why have you decided to focus on women’s football vs e.g. men’s football or women’s sports more broadly? ]

A lot of my friends have asked me that recently, especially with rugby taking off, like, ‘ why don't you go to rugby? You'll get more opportunities that way’.

I think it's just being authentic. Football is something that I've always been in love with, and the women's game, it caught me at a time that was just so unexpected and I kept focus on it. And now, I know so much about the women’s game, I know the players, their histories and trying to replicate that in another sport - would I have the time for it? Would it be a chore? Would it be something I love?

But, I also grew up playing rugby - my sister was the captain of our rugby team - and I’m friendly with a few of the Irish players. I could do some rugby content, but for me, football is just such a passion, it’s such a love, and I love the women’s football space so much, I just don’t think I can replicate that in another sport.

[ How do you think about goal setting and where you’d like to be in the future? ]

The ultimate goal for me at the moment is the Women's World Cup. That's something I really, really want to do. I want to go to Brazil and work there with some teams or brands again, kind of similar to the Euros.

But I think down the line, there are so many different things that I’m working on at the moment that I’d love to continue with. I’m really passionate about online safety for creators, for players and for everyone, so I’ve been working with a lot of key players in the UK on improving online safety acts and things like that. I’ve also been working for financial advisory companies on how to educate female athletes on financial topics like how to be aware of their pension and how to invest. I’m working with multi-club ownership companies and helping them have a more authentic voice and position themselves better. So, again, I’m wearing a lot of different hats.

I also just want to continue in the content creation space, I love posting stories online. I’d love to be in a position one day where I could hire journalists or photographers to work with me and be able to cover more things. There are so many things I’m really passionate about that it’s a bit difficult to answer, but mostly I just want to keep growing.