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'It's okay to work hard and be proud'

Heather O'Reilly found the net for the second time in our colours as we recorded a 4-2 win over Birmingham City at The Hive on Saturday afternoon.
 
The former USA international has made an impressive start to life at the club and has immediately cemented herself as a popular character both on and off the field.
Here's what she said when she spoke to Arsenal.com post-match:

on having now scored home and away for us - and how it feels…

Well, today felt good. Obviously for us to get the win is the most important thing so as long as we are creating goals and creating chances to score goals, that’s what the game is all about. It’s fun to score and that one felt for me just like a very instinctual goal, so I was pleased about that. We had a bit of a slow start to the game so I was happy to be able to get that one and give us some momentum going into half-time.
 
on scoring eight goals in two games at The Hive…
The Hive is a wonderful facility. I really like this field a lot. The crowd was good and I think it’s a good pitch for us, it’s big and the team has a good feeling all-round here.
 
on the fans taking her to heart quickly in England…
I think I just enjoy playing football and I think that people can see that for me, when I’m on the field I am very serious - I have my infamous game face! But off the field I’m pretty light-hearted and try to enjoy life. So hopefully if the fans see that and they appreciate it, that’s cool. I think another thing that I’ve tried to sort of pride myself in is that it’s perfectly okay to work hard and be proud of it and it’s cool to work hard and be proud of it. I hope these young players that are watching can see that and whether it’s in football or just in life, to just have these big dreams and just go for it. Have no embarrassment about having huge dreams because that’s what we all had and that’s why we’re here.
 
on it being important to right some wrongs against Birmingham…
I think so. That game [the Women’s FA Cup quarter-final loss] to us left a really bad taste in our mouths. Coming to this team, winning the FA Cup was one of my goals of coming over here. So it was a huge disappointment to get knocked out in the quarter-final. On the way here I was actually thinking about that game and just how disappointed I was. I wanted to make it right and I think our team showed a lot of resilience today. We didn’t come out the way that we would have wanted, but we grew into the game and got better and better and we scored two goals off Louise Quinn off the bench, which is huge. Everybody’s contributing in different ways and that is what’s going to help us win games.
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