By Daire Walsh

Now into her ninth season as a senior inter-county footballer, Leanne Coen is enjoying life as part of a Galway full-forward line that are currently making waves in Division 1 of the Lidl National Football League.

In their four games to date as inside forwards for the Tribeswomen in the top-tier of the NFL, Coen, Andrea Trill and Róisín Leonard have amassed an impressive combined tally of 8-20. In total, this accounts for just under 65% of the scores that Galway have accumulated in the 2026 league thus far.

A 2-1 haul earned Coen the TG4 Player of the Match when the Westerners defeated Armagh at a rain-soaked Duggan Park in Ballinasloe last Saturday, but she also found the net in previous encounters against Cork and Kildare. In addition to enhancing the understanding she has with Leonard at club level in the colours of Corofin, Coen has also been dovetailing to good effect with Claregalway attacker Trill.

“I’m loving it. I like being in there beside Róisín and Andrea. They make it very easy in there. It’s easy to run off them and they’re always looking for the pass. They are making it enjoyable in there,” Coen acknowledged.

“I’ve been playing with Róisín for the last few years and we’ve been playing a lot like that in club. Where she’d probably be in full-forward and I’d be out in half-forward. We can read each other well, knowing one is running or the other is. We can just read each other well.

“Goals sometimes win matches and it’s probably something we’ve been working on in training. To be very clinical in front of goals. In training we’re really putting it in and we’re just taking every match as good as we can.”

While Galway did lose out to Cork at Pairc Uí Rinn on February 1, wins over Meath, Kildare and Armagh has them just behind the Leesiders in the Division 1 table after four rounds of fixtures.

This has last year’s NFL Division 2 winners in a very good spot ahead of their meeting with reigning Division 1 champions Kerry at Austin Stack Park in Tralee tomorrow afternoon (throw-in 2pm).

This will be Galway’s first encounter with the Kingdom since losing out to the Munster county in the TG4 All-Ireland senior football championship decider at Croke Park on August 4, 2024. Even though Kerry have had some changes to playing and managerial personnel in the meantime, Coen stressed they remain a formidable force.

“They’re still a brilliant team. Very, very tough, physical team, but we’re going to have a look at it during the week at training and then go at it again on Sunday.

“We’re definitely happy to get our three wins out of four so far. We were disappointed with the Cork game, but we came together after that. We had our chat and we looked over it. We looked onto the Kildare game and we were happy to get the win. Just pushing on from there then.

“Cork are definitely a tough team. Any team going forward now will be tough with being in Division One and everything. I think ourselves and Cork being down in Division Two last year, going down the previous year, we’re trying to push forward and not get put back down there.”

It should come as little surprise that Galway have taken so comfortably to Division 1 football this year, given they were in a top-tier league final at GAA HQ as recently as 2023.

Coen started at right half-forward and scored a point when the Connacht outfit lost to Kerry in that particular showpiece and she also appeared as a substitute as Galway came up just short to Cork in an NFL Division 1 decider at Parnell Park in May 2019.

That was just Coen’s second season on the panel and it ended with her making another cameo off the bench as the westerners were defeated by Dublin in the TG4 All-Ireland senior football championship final in front of a record-breaking crowd of 56,114 in Croke Park.

Despite the result not going their way, Coen describes that whole year – and her initial introduction to adult inter-county football – as being hugely enjoyable.

“It was unbelievable. I don’t know what age I was. Maybe 18 or 19. It was just unbelievable for a young player starting out coming into it. I think it was my second year, it was just an unbelievable experience. We were just unfortunate with the result in the end, but again an amazing year.

“It was great to come in. There was so much experience, the likes of Emer Flaherty and Sinead Burke. Really experienced players, learned a lot from them. We’re lucky to still have a lot of those girls. Like Sarah Lynch, Olivia Divilly, the Wards [Nicola and Louise]. It’s great to still have them all there. A bit of experience.”

Previously a gym instructor at Tranquillity Leisure & Spa in Athenry, Coen has more recently been working with the medical device company Boston Scientific out of their Galway base in Ballybrit.

Although working with Tranquillity helped to aid her footballing career with both Galway and Corofin, she is very happy with the career move she has taken off the field of play in the past 12 months.

“I definitely miss the gym instructing. It was a great job working in Athenry and it was brilliant there. I started there I think around probably the year after I started with Galway. I was getting big into the gym and S&C is a big part of playing county. It did help me a lot,” Coen added.

“It was enjoyable, but I’m just looking for more structured hours at the minute. Working from seven to three just works better with training and life outside of training.

“I think I was very lucky. Being in Corofin, working in Athenry and then training in Galway. I’ve had it very lucky compared to other girls in our team that have a distance to travel, coming from the likes of Limerick or Dublin. Which is much tougher, but it definitely worked out well for me.”

Tweet

Most Read Stories