New managers set to bring more life to Women's Premier Division

The 2025 Women's Premier Division season will have a very different look to previous campaigns.

Athlone Town will be defending champions for the first time, Waterford will make their maiden appearance in the league and seven new managers will be leading their teams.

Normally new managers come in after a bad season or run of results but this year there are new faces in dugouts throughout the league.

The teams who finished first, fourth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth and 11th have all made new appointments.

The long off-season should have given the new bosses plenty of time to identify where they would like to bring about improvements, so we have looked at one strength of each team that can provide a foundation for the new appointees to build on.

The other managers on this list may look with jealously at the chance Colin Fortune has to take over last year’s best team. But expectations will be high for a club who has won trophies in consecutive years. Although Athlone won the league with the second lowest goals per game of any champion [2.0, above Wexford’s 1.94 in 2017], the increased competitiveness of the league’s bottom clubs has reduced scoring across the league. There are plenty of attacking talent at Athlone.

Despite losing Casey Howe mid-season, they brought in Brenda Tabe who scored seven times in her eight starts. That wasn’t enough to be the team’s top scorer, however, as league player of the year nominee Madison Gibson bagged eight. The American also led the league in assists [6] as well as being first in dribble success percentage and crosses per 90.

Another POTY nominee on the opposite wing was Roisin Molloy.

The Sligowoman chipped in with five goals and two assists in addition to being second in dribbles attempted