By DAIRE WALSH
LONG before making her debut with London in this year’s TG4 All-Ireland junior football championship, Leah Harrold was well used to rubbing shoulders with stars of the inter-county scene.
Now a member of the Wandsworth Gaels club in the English capital, Harrold previously lined out for St Sylvester’s in her native Dublin. Having picked up county and provincial honours in the junior grade as a teenager back in 2011, she went on to achieve the same feat with the Malahide outfit at intermediate level 10 years later and also added an All-Ireland second-tier title to her list of achievements when Syls defeated Castlebar Mitchels in a national decider in February 2022.
During her lengthy stint in the adult ranks of Sylvester’s, Harrold featured alongside Dublin stalwarts such as Sinead Aherne, Niamh McEvoy, Nicole Owens and Kate Sullivan — all of whom have collected multiple All-Ireland senior crowns with the Jackies. Given this impressive quartet are all attackers, and she was ordinarily deployed as a defender by Syls, Harrold was often provided with as much of a test in club training as she was in competitive matches.
“They’re all absolute role models. Just such unbelievable talents and such great leaders. When we’d be back in training, it’d be great. Obviously I was playing in the full-back line or the half-back line. Any of those backs/forwards drills, I might be lining up against Sinead Aherne or Kate Sullivan or Nicole Owens,” recalled Harrold, who also played with Down’s Kim White in Sylvester’s.
“Just being able to practice marking players of that calibre, it really prepares you very well for the big games when you’re coming out into All-Ireland semi-finals, All-Ireland finals and playing Dublin senior club as well. I just learned so much from them. How they communicate, read the game, things like that. They were brilliant for giving me advice as well.
“The likes of Sinead Aherne and Niamh McEvoy, representing Dublin, it was a really cool thing that they were part of your club as well. Playing alongside them as soon as it got to adult level, it was brilliant. It was really enjoyable.”
After winning that All-Ireland intermediate club championship title a little over two years ago, Harrold initially remained with Sylvester’s and was playing at left corner-back for their Dublin senior football championship semi-final loss to Kilmacud Crokes in September 2022.
Yet with a number of her friends from the Syls team opting to travel abroad to Australia, Harrold also started to contemplate the idea of spending some time overseas. In the end, she decided to make the move over to London and is currently employed as a validation and pharmaceutical compliance manager with the British engineering company, Puretech Process Systems.
At the same time, she was in the middle of remotely undertaking a master’s in pharmaceutical quality assurance and regulation with TU Dublin and she explains that this played some part in her decision to choose England over a journey to the southern hemisphere.
“My three friends moved to Australia in December 2022. At that time, I had just been on a visit to London a few months previous to visit a college friend. Just while I was in London, I thought ‘wow, there’s a lot of advantages to living here’. In terms of work and just the lifestyle as well, but it’s obviously much closer to home, which suited me as well.
“Obviously there is no time difference, so I knew I was going to have to be doing a year and a half more of my master’s remotely. So I obviously wanted to be living somewhere where I was relatively close to the university where I was completing it as well.”
Despite having a demanding work and college life, Harrold found time to play Gaelic football over in England and officially completed a transfer to the Clapham-based Wandsworth Gaels in the spring of 2023.
While lining out for London wasn’t necessarily a goal for her when she started out at Wandsworth, Harrold was one of a host of new faces that Exiles boss Tommy Donohue called upon when he was finalising his panel for the All-Ireland junior championship in April and May of this year.
After operating solely as a club player back in her home county, Harrold suddenly found herself thrust into the inter-county grade and was a starter for London’s recent reversals to Derry and Carlow in Group A of the All-Ireland JFC.
“I have to say, the standard is really, really good in the junior inter-county championship. I’m really impressed with it. I was fortunate enough, particularly when I was playing with St Sylvester’s, to come up against some very strong players as well as playing with some excellent players alongside me as well,” Harrold acknowledged.
“They’ve a brilliant talent pool as well over in London and even in my club Wandsworth Gaels. I feel like I’ve been lucky enough to just be playing really good football since I’ve moved over.”
Unfortunately, due to a combination of a calf injury and illness, Harrold was unavailable for London’s home encounter with Sligo at McGovern Park in Ruislip last Saturday – a game the hosts lost on a scoreline of 1-20 to 5-3 at the end of a gripping contest.
Yet her recovery from these set-backs has gone according to plan and — like her Wandsworth club-mates Aoife Ryan, Abbie Sexton and Rebekah McKegney — is hoping to play a key role in London’s final championship group game against Fermanagh in Killeeshil tomorrow (throw-in 2pm). They might be out of contention for a knockout spot as a result of three defeats on the bounce, but Harrold and her colleagues are focused on finishing their 2024 campaign on an encouraging note.
“We’re finding week on week, or game on game, that we’re making improvements in different aspects of our play. We’ve had a very positive win or learn attitude. We’re looking at what we’re doing well and we’re looking to improve any kind of gaps in our game,” Harrold added.
“Even though going into Fermanagh, they’ve had a couple of wins and we’ve had a couple of losses, we’re still going in with our heads up and a positive attitude. The girls are really happy to be involved in the championship, which is great.”
Leah Harrold (left) with Wandsworth Gaels clubmates Rebekah McKegney (centre) and Aoife Ryan after playing for London against Carlow in the TG4 All-Ireland JFC.
