Liverpool captain and former Galway star Niamh Fahey says she'd love to play GAA again

It is close to a decade since she first started embracing the life of a professional athlete, but Republic of Ireland international Niamh Fahey hasn’t ruled out the prospect of returning to a Gaelic football pitch at some point in the future.

A TG4 All-Ireland senior football championship winner with her native Galway in 2004 under the tutelage of PJ Fahy, the Killannin woman switched regularly between inter-county ladies football and soccer before sealing a move to Women’s Super League outfit Arsenal in 2008.

She was naturally drawn to Gaelic sports, with her brothers Gary and Richie, as well as her distant cousin Kevin Walsh, having been part of the Galway men’s teams that won All-Ireland senior titles in 1998 and 2001.

Despite eventually drifting away from the Tribeswomen upon joining forces with Arsenal, she kept one foot in the LGFA by lining out for the Parnell’s club in London - with whom she won an All-Ireland intermediate title in 2012.

A transfer to Chelsea in the winter of 2014 saw her taking up soccer on a full-time basis for the first time, however, and she went on to spend a single season with Bordeaux in France before transferring to her current employers Liverpool in 2018. The 35-year-old doesn’t have any grandiose plans for a potential comeback to Ladies Football, with plenty still left in the tank from a soccer perspective, but Killannin is a club that remains close to her heart.

“Obviously if I go back home to Ireland, I’d love to play with my club team again. Beyond that, I don’t have many lofty ambitions past that, really. I would have always said, as the years go on, you’re still in the UK and you’re still playing professionally and at a high level. I try not to think too far down the line,” Fahey