Nov 29,2024
Take a walk around Anfield and you won't need to work hard to find Leanne Kiernan.
Her image is emblazoned on the exterior wall of the Kop, spliced into a mural beside Virgil van Dijk and Andy Robertson.
It's a surreal feeling for Kiernan, who is regularly tagged in social media pictures by Cavan-born match-goers proud to see one of their own celebrated on the walls of the famous ground.
But the 25-year-old isn't exactly one to lose the run of herself. Kiernan is the definition of zen.
At FAI HQ ahead of Friday's huge Euro 2025 play-off first leg against Wales, she's breezy, calm and rooted in the realities of top-level sport.
The twist here is that Kiernan lives with Liverpool team-mate Ceri Holland, who fired Wales past Slovakia in the semis with an extra-time goal to set up this international derby.
There will be lots of familiarity between Ireland and the Welsh, but no contempt, insists Kiernan. It's all part of the game.
"To be honest we don't really talk about football at home," she said when asked if there has been any tension between the two housemates over the last week.
"Because it's our job, we come home and there's no football talk - gossip and all but no football.
"I moved up to Liverpool four years ago and they moved me in with Ceri. I didn't know who she was. It worked out well.
"That's life though isn't it? It's football. The best team wins on the day. It'll be tough coming back for one of us. One of the girls goes, 'Aw don't worry I've a spare bedroom!'. That's the exciting thing about football, isn't it? You don't know who's going to win."
The stakes are high in Cardiff but Kiernan is so relaxed that it'd be easy to forget she's a tenacious, committed competitor on the field of play.
She was desperately unlucky to miss out on a spot in Vera Pauw's World Cup squad in the summer of 2023 having failed to prove her fitness after returning from an ankle injury that had wiped out most of her club season.
It stung, but Kiernan has found her groove again for Liverpool and Ireland. She admits that making a career out of football wasn't exactly an obsession when she grew up working on the family pig farm in Bailieborough. Fate intervened to take her across the Irish Sea.
"Everybody has a dream of becoming this professional footballer and everything else. I was in the farming college until I got a call to go abroad. It was never really deep down in my mind. I just always did what I enjoyed.
"I probably didn't think I'd get this far right now, and I know I've a lot to go and a lot of dreams to fulfil, but it's a nice moment and of course we all reflect on what we want to do better and what we're happy in in life.
"I remember I moved abroad and I told my parents, 'I love football and this is why I'm doing the job, but if there's ever a point that I don't like it any more, I think I'd hang up my boots and come home'.
"So right now that's the priority for me. I'm really enjoying my football. We're playing in one of the games of my life next week, and I'm in a good place. I have the family coming over to Cardiff so they're happy out."
Family, football and taking things as they come - that's Leanne Kiernan's philosophy and it's serving her well.
"I think it's like everything in life," she offered. "If you're not enjoying what's happening right now, there's no point in looking forward to the future because you're just missing out on the now.
"Enjoy it. We're only here for a short time, we've got to make the most of it don't we?"
