Payne takes flight once again for mammoth Irish battle

Heather Payne arrived at the Castleknock Hotel on Tuesday morning to complete the final part of another long journey.

Studying in the US and playing for college team Florida State Seminoles, Payne took her usual route back to Ireland ahead of Tuesday's World Cup qualifier against Sweden: from Tallahassee to Atlanta, Atlanta to Dublin. Then, the little hop from Dublin Airport to Castleknock.

She'd have been entitled to plonk herself on the bed once check-in at the team hotel was done but Payne was straight upstairs for media duties ahead of afternoon training.

It's a gruelling routine, but if anyone has the energy required to make light of that it's the player Niamh Fahey once described as "half horse, half human". Payne may be slight in stature, but her appetite and aptitude for sustained, hard running makes her crucial to her team's hopes of plundering something from Gothenburg.

"It's a long route," the 22-year-old said. "Usually I'd have three flights: Tallahassee to Atlanta, and then I'd have to go from Atlanta to Amsterdam, and then Amsterdam to Dublin. That's been the route my whole time that I've been in Florida. It's about 20-plus hours' traveling.

"But luckily a couple of weeks ago they opened up a new route that goes Atlanta to Dublin, which I just came from (on Monday) so that's after making my journey so much easier: two flights, Tallahassee to Atlanta and then about an eight-hour flight from Atlanta to Dublin. It's much better."

Payne probably won't have to make that trans-Atlantic journey for too much longer. She has one more year of college to go and would have no shortage of suitors if she opts to move to England or Europe, which is the plan.

Last summer the Roscommon native spent time training with Liverpool,