It was back in the summer of 2008 that Niamh Fahey left Galway for London having been offered a contract by Arsenal. The plan was to give it a year, see how it went, and if it didn’t work out, come home.
It worked out. Fifteen years on and the Liverpool captain has just extended her contract with the club, so she will play yet another season in England’s top flight – and look to add to an array of honours that includes five league titles and five FA Cups from her Arsenal and Chelsea days.
Now, though, she can focus on the small matter of the World Cup, the three-time Irish player of the year, and fourth most-capped of all time (106), having joined up with the Republic of Ireland squad at their UCD base last week.
“Signing the contract gives me a good fresh mental break now, the club future is sorted for another year so I can focus fully on Ireland,” she says. “It was nice to get it over the line before coming in to camp.”
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There’ll be a sprinkling of Faheys in Australia for the tournament, her brother Gary among those who will be making the trip. That means he’ll miss the marking of the 25th anniversary of Galway’s 1998 championship triumph at half-time in July’s All Ireland final, but he had no trouble finding someone to represent him on the day.
“Dad [Richard] will be suited and booted, he’s going to Croker in Gary’s place. He’s not a big fan of flying, getting him to Liverpool on a plane is a job in itself, so I don’t think getting him to Australia was ever within the remit. He’ll be happy enough in Croker anyway and he’ll watch our games on the telly.”
But Fahey, an All-Ireland winner herself with Galway in 2004, isn’t taking anything for granted about her inclusion in the World Cup squad having suffered a scare back in February when an injury kept her out of action for three months.
“It was in training with Liverpool, I just felt something in the back of my calf, didn’t think much of it, innocuous enough, I thought it was probably just fatigue,” she says. “The scan suggested a grade one injury that would only have kept her out for up to three weeks, but it was a misdiagnosis, the damage more serious.
She was, she admits, “fuming”.
“But there’s no point blaming anyone. You do have a day or two of thinking ‘shit luck’, of being pissed off, you have to get that out, there’s no point bottling it up, you’d explode. But you get over that initial anger and focus on the rehab. I’d say I’d a day [of being angry]. My family might say a bit longer,” she laughs.
It was the first significant injury she’d suffered in 10 years, the 35-year-old’s fitness record since then remarkable. That, then, added to her frustration when this one struck.
The one consolation was that she had company through her recovery, her Liverpool and Irish team-mate Leanne Kiernan working her way back to fitness at the same time after a longer-term ankle injury.
“But yeah, it was like, ‘not now, please’. It was mentally draining. I was speaking to my family a lot, trying to stay calm, trusting my body that it wouldn’t let me down, and what will be will be. You get philosophical at certain points, but luckily enough everything worked itself out, thank God.”
She finally returned to action for Liverpool in their penultimate game of the season last month and, she says, she’s feeling fit and healthy again. Come World Cup time, she’s hoping to be suited and booted.
