LEANNE KIERNAN missed out on the World Cup last summer.
But she still spent that time out on the field.
She explained: “I’m very much, like, what’s for me won’t pass me. I wasn’t supposed to go to that World Cup and I’m OK with that.
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“I don’t know if you’ve seen but I was with my cows. Actually, one of my cows is pregnant, she’s about to calve next month!
“That was the project that I was doing. I would have been planning that around the World Cup, maybe.
“I had a wee baby calf that I saw in Cavan two years ago and I was, ‘I want to buy that when it’s old enough’. I remember I flew home in the January, bought it at nine months old or so. I couldn’t put it in calf until it was nearly two.
“I had six weeks off last year and it wasn’t a bad summer to be fair.
“My brother got a quad so we’d be ripping around the fields looking at all the cattle and I thought, ‘This is the one that I want. I’d love a baby’.”
Kiernan’s family farm is mostly centred around pigs, though she admits cows always interested her — and she now has three.
She added: “I always had an interest. I remember for my First Communion money, I went and spent money on cows instead of make-up or jewellery. I guess it’s just normalised!”
Naturally, she watched the Girls in Green compete in Australia last year when not looking after her cows.
But the break was also good for the Liverpool striker as it allowed her to reset after the most testing period of her career.
Kiernan is philosophical about her World Cup omission — and it should be remembered she did remarkably well to even be in contention after suffering a serious ankle injury on the opening day of Liverpool’s 2022-23 season that kept her out until the final game of that campaign.
In the end, Vera Pauw deemed her not match-fit for Australia.
Kiernan, 25, added: “I feel like people don’t realise, and I didn’t realise either, after surgery the steps there are to get back.
“But then, constantly, it’s been 18 months and I know I have to do 30 to 45 minutes’ rehab every day so I don’t get flare-ups in my tendons. I get shockwave every week on my tendons, I’ve had two cortisone injections, it’s constant management of that.
“Those 15 months injured were the hardest I’ve ever been tested in my life, sport-wise. I guess it’s just trying to keep mentally strong, that it will come right, and it did. I’m very grateful for the physios I had.”
Her right ankle now occasionally sets off metal detectors but it is fully healed and should never give her any other problems.
And with the injury behind her, Kiernan has got back in action and among the goals with a great end to the season for Matt Beard’s Liverpool.
A hat-trick on the last day against Leicester City came two weeks after she struck the winner against eventual champions Chelsea.
But the goal that meant the most to her was her first since the injury — a scruffy tap-in against her former club West Ham United.
Kiernan added: “Beardy was like, ‘Calm down, Leanne, the goal will come’. I was like, ‘I want it right now’.
“It was against my old team, West Ham. I remember thinking, ‘I’m just going to stay between the sticks, the ball will come to me’.
“My room-mate Ceri Holland had a collision with the goalkeeper and it dropped in front of me.
It was two yards, I just tapped it in. I was like, ‘Is it that easy and I’ve been waiting for so long to try and score?’
“It was amazing, I can’t even describe my celebration. For a two-yard goal, I was running riot!”
She spent a lot of time watching games — either live or with Liverpool’s video analyst — during her time out, something she believes has made her a better player.
And she hopes Eileen Gleeson’s Ireland can benefit from that on Friday against Sweden in Dublin after her recent cameo appearances.
There was a goal ruled out for offside against Italy in February but the Euro 2025 qualifiers last month against France and England also saw chances passed up between Kiernan and skipper Katie McCabe.
In France, McCabe punched the ground in annoyance that Kiernan failed to pick her out in the box with a cross as Ireland looked to equalise.
Kiernan said: “I’m not on a lot of social media so I didn’t see any of this. We’re footballers, we’re in the eye of everyone and, to be fair, people can say what they want.
“D’ya know what? People think I was shooting. I wasn’t even shooting. I took my touch and I went to whip it across to the back post.
Obviously it just floated away off the pitch.
“I didn’t see her, I didn’t look up, I guess that’s maybe the lack of game involvement. I’ll learn from it and we go again.”
Then against England, McCabe shot instead of passing to an unmarked Kiernan, who smiled: “We won’t talk about that! It’s football. People make mistakes, that’s why it’s such a good game — and then you have a second of glory and it’s brilliant.
“We learn, we go again. It’s probably the lack of playing together, too.”
With another month of action behind her and now back among the goals, she hopes to really kick on against the Swedes.
She added: “I feel like I’m fully back to what I can produce. Ireland’s been great. Eilo has a lot of trust in me, which is really nice.”