Casey Howe's Journey: From Maguiresbridge to Celtic Stardom

From Maguiresbridge’s back roads to the bright lights of Celtic, Casey Howe has crammed a lot into 23 years. Northern Ireland debut at 17. A treble with Glentoran. Spells in England. Promotion with Wolves. Now she’s landed at one of the biggest clubs in Scottish women’s football – and this chapter already feels different.

On Sunday, she offered a glimpse of why.

With Celtic locked at 0-0 against Montrose deep into the second half, tension creeping in, Howe stepped inside on her left and bent a gorgeous curler into the far corner. Eighty‑second minute. Deadlock smashed. Celtic went on to win 3-0 in the Scottish Women’s Premier League, but it was the County Fermanagh forward who changed the mood of the afternoon.

For Howe, it was a surreal moment, and not just because it was only her second appearance for the club. This is a player who still sees herself as “just a young girl from Maguiresbridge,” suddenly making an impact in Glasgow’s East End.

The route to Celtic’s slick Barrowfield training centre has been anything but straightforward. It started with long car journeys and longer days. Her parents ferried her to Ballinamallard, Cookstown and Belfast four or five nights a week, chasing better opposition, better coaching, better chances.

“They wanted to give me the best platform to be the best I can,” she said, reflecting on those endless miles. Without those drives, she knows, she simply wouldn’t be here.

Those sacrifices underpinned everything that followed. Linfield. Glentoran. Sligo Rovers. Then Athlone Town, where a prolific spell in the League of Ireland Women’s Premier Division made people across the water sit up and take notice. A move to Nottingham Forest came next, then Wolves and promotion. Each stop added a layer. Each move nudged her closer to this stage.

Now she believes Celtic is the place to push her game into a different bracket.

As she settles under head coach Grant Scott, the demands have gone up. So has her excitement.

“I think as a player, you’re always looking to develop in any training session,” she said. The work at Celtic, she feels, has sharpened her tactically. Different styles. Different shapes. A clear idea of how Scott wants his side to play. The details matter here – and she’s buying in.

What really lights her up, though, is Celtic’s attacking intent. This is a team that wants the ball, wants to play, wants to go for the throat. For a 14-cap international who thrives in the final third, it’s a natural fit.

“We’re trying to play a nice attacking brand of football,” she explained. For Howe, that means freedom – the licence to drift, to drive at defenders, to change angles with or without the ball. When an attacker feels unshackled, she argues, you see the best version of them.

She’s felt the other side of it. The rigid systems. The pre-set runs. The “you must stand here, move there” approach that can strip the instinct out of a forward. At Celtic, it feels different.

“I’ve played under people in the past where it’s almost robotic,” she admitted. Now she’s encouraged to pop up in unfamiliar pockets, to rotate with teammates, to cause chaos. When everyone is moving, she says, it becomes far harder to defend – and far easier to feel confident.

That confidence is not just about her own career. Howe’s connection to home remains strong, and she is acutely aware of what it takes for a young girl from Fermanagh to follow a similar path.

“I think sometimes it’s hard because being from Fermanagh you don’t necessarily have the facilities on your doorstep,” she said. The next generation still faces those same long drives up and down the country just to train and play at a higher level.

For Howe, those journeys were the price of admission. Now, with medals in the bag and a Celtic shirt on her back, she can say with certainty: the sacrifices were worth it. “Winning makes it all worth it,” she said, summing up years of graft in a single line.

Her form in Glasgow could pay off far beyond club football. Howe already has 14 caps, but she wants her development at Celtic to feed straight into Northern Ireland’s progress. She talks about the green shirt with a sense of duty, not just pride.

“I want to leave the Northern Ireland shirt in a better place than when I came in. I always want that legacy to continue to build and grow,” she said. It’s a big statement, but it matches the way she thinks about the sport as a whole.

She’s not just chasing goals and trophies. She wants to shift the landscape, even if only slightly. If she can leave women’s football in Northern Ireland, Scotland and England “that 1% better” than when she found it, that will count as a win. If that 1% helps a girl in Fermanagh believe there is a pathway, that there is a point to those late nights and long drives, all the better.

From Ballinamallard United to Barrowfield, from family cars to professional setups, Howe has already covered serious ground. She has felt the treble buzz with Glentoran, the promotion high with Wolves, the honour of an early international debut.

Now she’s scoring decisive goals for Celtic, chasing silverware in Scotland and carrying the hopes of a national team and a county that knows exactly how far she has travelled.

The road that began on those dark Fermanagh evenings is still stretching out in front of her – and, crucially, more young girls back home can now see where it might lead.