Vance Of A Lifetime (Demi Vance interview)

Four pages with the Northern Ireland left-footer heading to her country’s first major tournament with a first Rangers league title in her locker, won in her first season back from an ACL tear. Demi Vance cheerfully confirms Simone Magill’s verdict from two issues earlier that you can hear her before you see her, and traces it to living in Australia and working an office job and a bar. The substance is the before-and-after: home internationals once played an hour and forty minutes from Belfast in front of what she calls two men and a dog, against a sold-out Windsor Park for England’s visit. Under Kenny and Dean Shiels, she says, a team that used to compete simply to keep the score down has been rebuilt entirely, and bought into every bit of it.