AISLING O'REILLY grew up a fan of SoccerAM - but never thought she would be leading Ireland's answer to it. The Irish sports broadcaster's newest job will see her present Total Football - a weekly morning TV show on RTE2 and RTE Player - alongside Rasdi Nsimba. The 10-part series, which starts this Saturday, will take young fans behind the scenes of football - complete with special guests including Evan Ferguson and Katie McCabe. The similarities between it and SoccerAM - the iconic weekly football show that ran on Sky from 1994 to 2023 - is not lost on O'Reilly, who was an avid viewer of it in her youth. The Meath-native told SunSport: "I liked the chaos of it and the fun environment. "They had something for everyone to enjoy on the show." O'Reilly herself has become more of a household name on Irish airwaves, through her work with Off The Ball, Premier Sports, and GAAGO. Her burgeoning reputation makes for a sharp contrast to what her younger self believed was open to her. Indeed, with the exception of watching Helen Chamberlain on her TV every Saturday morning, there were not many in the way of female role models available to her. She admitted: "I think growing up, it was a bit of a mixed view. I never believed I could do that. "I think that's sad that I thought that way but that was the case. I played sport all my life, still play. "It is a massive part of my life but, in terms of being a presenter or within the media world of sport, I never saw many women do it." That was not for the want of interest. She has been a life-long player of camogie, gaelic football, and soccer, and won an All-Ireland Junior 'B' camogie title with Ratoath in 2018. The five O'Reilly kids grew up with sport all around them. And with memories like Meath’s All-Ireland final wins of 1996 and 1999, it was only natural that Aisling nurtured a dream to work in sport in some way, shape, or form. O'Reilly added: "My mam and dad would say I have always been playing. I would always have a ball at my feet or playing camogie or hurling. "We grew up on a country lane in Ratoath in Meath. It was really just my siblings and my cousins that lived on the lane and we are all mad about sport. "My uncle is a big figure in my life and he was mad into sport so I think he always instilled it in me, as well as my parents." NEW YORK STATE OF MIND But even in her early playing days, the obstacles on-the-field mirrored those off-the-field. She explained: "Growing up in Ratoath, there was no women's football team, so I do think that affected me in terms of playing soccer. "Then I was playing GAA so we played with the lads hurling team; there was no camogie team. "The ladies football side of things, I played with the lads but then we formed the ladies team when I was about nine years of age. "I would see the odd game on TG4 or my uncle would always keep the cut-outs from the paper for me and I could read in the paper about games. "Thankfully, as I got older, I understood there is loads of women's teams. We just need more visibility." With no clear pathway into sports journalism, Aisling instead studied event management and business in Dundalk. Meanwhile, she helped out in her dad's pub in Dunshaughlin, although she always wanted more. In 2013, she travelled to New York and it was here that her worldview changed and the building blocks towards a successful career in media began to form. "i think that is where I really saw the power of sport. "It was just seeing how they did the coverage of the NFL over there. We went to a lot of games within the NFL. "The Jets, we supported them, so we went to those games and we saw the coverage of sport and how they did it and how fun and enjoyable and off the cuff it was. "We did ice hockey games, we did basketball games. The Brooklyn Nets, we used to go to some of their games out in the Barclays Centre in Brooklyn. "There were so many females doing it and, at that point, there was definitely more females coming into the Irish scene, don't get me wrong. "I think for me just being there in America and being there in New York and seeing it, I said, 'oh yeah, I definitely want to try this when I get home.'" "The aim was always to get into Off The Ball and I remember my desk was facing into the Off The Ball studio so, every single day, I used to face into that studio and watch their show and I used to say I will get in there." As well as forming a desire to pursue a career in sports media, O'Reilly continued her playing exploits stateside. She played for Cavan NY and it was through the club that Aisling began a Hallmark-worthy love story with now-husband Colm. He had travelled over in 2014, initially for a three-month stint. However, he met Aisling at The Dugout sports bar in Queens and, within ten days of Colm returning to Ireland, he was back in America. Both returned to Ireland in 2016 and now live together in his native Down, and got married in Portugal last year. In keeping with their story, friends they made in America made the trip to the ceremony. She said: "He is not the kind of person to really do that. "He wanted to go back and play for the club, that was massive for him, so the fact that he did come back was a shock to a lot of people." It was also upon her return to Ireland in 2016 that O'Reilly started her media career, first as a member of the events team with 98FM in Dublin. But her eyes were always set on getting into sports journalism. All she needed was an opening. She added: "I didn't know how to get into radio, I didn't have any experience to get into radio or TV. "Eventually, a job came up in 98FM for the events team. You are applying to be on the events team to go out to their outside broadcasts and stuff like that for them. "There was a Dublin ladies open training session and I said I'm going to go out to it. I'm going to get a lend of a mic and I'm going to go out. "I brought my little brother with me and I said, 'here, you hold the camera.' The two of us didn't know what we were doing. "We did the interviews and a few of them did really well. We got over 20,000 views for one of them which was a lot." OFF AND RUNNING There was still a lot of hard work and grafting to be done but her foot was in the door. In 2017, she got a job as administrative assistant with NewsTalk and it was through this that she got in the ear of those at Off The Ball. In January 2019, she got what she always wanted - a job as a sports reporter with OTB. For the next six years, Aisling got to travel anywhere and everywhere to do anything and everything. At the start of 2023, for instance, she was pitchside at the Aviva Stadium as Ireland won the Grand Slam. That same year, she flew out to France to cover the Rugby World Cup - and was there when Johnny Sexton bid farewell following the quarter-final loss to the All Blacks. That November, she was ringside when Katie Taylor beat Chantelle Cameron to become a two-weight undisputed champion at the 3Arena. And last year, she was back in France for the Olympics as Kellie Harrington, Daniel Wiffen, and Rhys McClenaghan struck gold. She added: "The aim was always to get into Off The Ball and I remember my desk was facing into the Off The Ball studio so, every single day, I used to face into that studio and watch their show and I used to say I will get in there. "That was always a bucket list thing for me to do, to cover Katie Taylor. One of the best Irish sportspeople ever, if not the best. "Getting to do things like that, covering the Rugby World Cup, covering All-Ireland finals, Olympic games. it really has been incredible and I learnt so, so much. "When I went in there, I was completely raw. I didn't know how to be a reporter but they took a chance on me." That stage of her journey ended this past January, by which time she had already been a couple of years deep into TV presenting work with Premier Sports. She parlayed that into working with GAAGO, and will be returning to the streaming service when it rebrands as GAA+. Eight years after beginning her media career, she can't help but reflect on when she never thought it would happen. She admitted: "A lot of the time, I wasn't happy with where I was in life. I was upset about that quite a bit and I'm sure that came across a lot of the time. "When I finally started to have these opportunities, one of my things was I'm embracing this. "I wanted this to happen for so long that I'm not fixated on where I need to be or where I want to get to in this career because I couldn't tell you where that is. "My dad said this to me before. He does construction, that was his job that he did before he went into having property and the bar and stuff. "He always said his best years were trying to get the big jobs. It was all the fun along the way to try and get there. "That always stuck with me." FREE FUTURE When she went freelance at the end of January, she was approached by Darragh Bambrick of Brick Films about hosting Total Football. The show will include bringing kids into the press box, press conferences, shadowing professional photographers, and sitting pitchside for Ireland games, and more. The debut episode will include cameos from Evan Ferguson, recently retired Ireland striker Julie-Ann Russell, and the rising stars of Salthill Devon F.C. And having grown up believing sport was closed to her, she wants to use the show as a way of showing kids that the future is open to them. "For me, I just hope it has an impact on kids and it inspires them and encourages them to go out and play football and enjoy their sport. "Sport is for everybody, it doesn't differentiate at all and I just hope it encourages kids to go out and enjoy sport and takes them away from sitting in and video games and things like that. "Hopefully it will show other kids that there are all these jobs in sports media because I don't think I realised half of that."