From Galway girl to Gunner

HOME AND AWAY NIAMH FAHEY (Soccer):AT THE end of last month's All-Ireland women's football final between Cork and Dublin, Niamh Fahey could understand better than most the emotions of both sets of players, as the 21-year-old from Rosscahill, Co Galway, has experienced victory and defeat in Croke Park, writes MARY HANNIGAN

In 2004, she was a member of the Galway team which won their first senior All-Ireland women’s football title (Dublin were the defeated county that day, too), adding to the family roll of honour: brothers Gary (1998 and 2001) and Richie (2001) were All-Ireland winners, and Gary had captained Galway to their 2001 defeat of Meath.

A year later, though, she was on the losing side when Cork won the first of their five-in-a-row.

“So, yeah, I know how they all felt,” she says. “I felt so sorry for Dublin. I thought they had it, too, but there’s just no stopping Cork, you can’t put a good side down. They’re ruthless, just an unbelievable team.”

She would, she says, love to get back to Croke Park with Galway one day. “It’s one of the things I miss most. Hopefully, if I get a while in the summer, I’ll get to play with my club (Killanin).”

For now, though, another code occupies her time.

The 2008 FAI player of the year left Salthill Devon to join the Irish contingent – Emma Byrne, Ciara Grant and Yvonne Tracy – at Arsenal in July of last year, when the club signed her up after watching her in a friendly between the Republic of Ireland and the English champions in Dublin.

“It was a big decision because I’d never left home before, so it was going to be a massive step. But I just thought it was too big of an opportunity to turn down. I wanted to try and progress in soccer, so I felt this was the way to do it, by playing with some of the best players in the world.

“It was very hard at first, I missed home a lot, my family, my friends. But Emma, Ciara and Yvonne were great to me, really helped me settle in. And I have kind of settled in to a routine now, so it hasn’t been so bad. But I still miss home a lot, that’ll never change, I’d say.”

Fahey was a pharmacology student at NUIG and, intent on completing her course, transferred, on a sports scholarship, to the University of Hertfordshire, where she is in her final year.

“I have lectures three times a week, training with Arsenal on a Tuesday and a Thursday, I’ve a college training session on Wednesday, then there are games at the weekend. It’s a busy week, but it’s grand, I’m able to manage it.”

She lives in Shenley, “about half an hour from central London by train”.

“It’s out a bit in the country so I’m not in the hustle and bustle of it all. I like to go in to London, it’s a cool city, but I definitely wouldn’t like to live in it, it’s a bit crazy in there.”

The financial “rewards” are negligible: most of the Arsenal players pick up no more than modest expenses. So, no £100,000-a-week cheques?

“I think my father got a few questions in the pub back home all right,” she laughs.

“A few raised eyebrows, I don’t know how much they thought I was getting!

“But as everyone knows there’s not much out of women’s sport, and definitely not in women’s football. I won’t be arriving home in a Ferrari.”

The footballing rewards, though, have been rich, with Arsenal winning the treble in Fahey’s first season. Included in that haul was the club’s sixth successive Premier League title and the FA Cup, won in front of a crowd of 23,000 at Derby’s Pride Park.

Fahey, then, completed the Irish and English FA Cup double, having scored the winner for the Galway League in the FAI Cup final two years before.

“It was a great first season,” she says. “When I first came over I didn’t really expect too much because I was new, but I got most of the games in at left back, rather than midfield where I’d usually have played. But I was delighted to be playing regularly, and to cap it all off with the treble was unbelievable.

“The standard of the league wasn’t too much of a step up, the biggest challenge was with Arsenal itself. Getting in to the team, the level they’re at, the number of international players they have, just playing with Arsenal is nearly the hardest thing to do.”

This season she’s part of the team playing in the new women’s Champions League, although she had a quiet defensive night in Greece last week when Arsenal beat PAOK 9-0 in the first leg of their tie.

“When we come up against German or Norwegian or Danish sides I’m sure it’ll be very different, we’d be the underdogs against a lot of those clubs.”

Her “ultimate dream”, she says, is to qualify with the Republic of Ireland for the 2011 World Cup in Germany. Later this month she travels to Russia and Kazakhstan for group qualifying games, following last month’s defeat away to Switzerland and a 2-1 win over the Kazakhs at Turner’s Cross. Israel complete the five-team group.

“We didn’t have the best of starts, we thought we could get something from Switzerland, then we were really lucky to beat Kazakhstan, so we feel like we’ve been given a second chance. But if we can get results out of these games I definitely think we have a great chance of getting out of the group and in to the play-offs.”

Long-term, Fahey, 22 next Tuesday, will consider moving to the US to further her footballing – and academic – career.

“I got an approach to go to there, a full scholarship in Florida, so that was kind of tempting. But there’s a lot of hassle with rules and regulations, so it didn’t work out. It might be an option to do a Masters over there, women’s football is massive in America so I’d definitely be interested.

“It would be a huge move, you’re miles away and you can’t just skip over home on a Ryanair,” she laughs.

“It’ll take a lot more deciding, but it’s definitely something I will think about.”