Tuesday Blue

Tuesday is Blues Day and this week’s Tuesday Blue is the outstanding Mia Lenihan who scored an exquisite 25-yard free kick on Saturday to earn a fantastic point for Waterford away to league leaders Galway United.

I can’t count how many times I’ve rewatched it now and it’s literally a textbook free kick - struck with just the right amount of power and dip to get over the wall and fly past goalkeeper Amanda McQuillan (the league’s Golden Gloves winner the past two seasons). The technique was absolutely perfect, allowing the ball to rocket into the very top left corner. Unstoppable.

Mia, from Kill, only turned 23 this month, but has had a long journey to playing for Waterford with numerous stops along the way. She started out with Seaview Celtic before spells with Ferrybank, Ballyduff and Bohemians. There were times when she played in boys teams and that has definitely stood to her.

With no team in Waterford, she made her entry to the League of Ireland with Carlow-Kilkenny and later moved to Wexford. She made her first team debut for Wexford as a teenager in 2022 and won the Under-19s Cup with them the following year. Meanwhile, she also completed the FAI/ETB course where she trained and played every day with a particularly strong class of male academy players, but coach Paddy Carey always said she never looked overmatched or out of place against them.

 

 

Long seen as a real talent, Lenihan is a perfect illustration of why we needed a women’s team in Waterford. She joined the academy in the summer of 2024 ahead of the impending establishment of the women’s team and then, last year, finally got to achieve what she really wanted by playing for the Blues.

She is a fun player to watch with a superb range of passing, thumping strikes and an eagerness to take players on. She is a real throwback player. I don’t usually like to compare female footballers to males, but Mia’s style strikes me as similar to how fans describe the legendary John O’Neill with devil-may-care dribbling, toughness, creativity and a powerful shot - and he won seven league medals so that’s not a bad comparison.

Off the field, Lenihan is a great asset for the club too. She has quietly done a huge amount of work to help in the community and to help build the Waterford Women’s team. She has visited schools and clubs (like presenting medals to kids in Abbeyside last week). She accompanied our DS Futsal team to help them in Dublin when they won the Cairdeas Cup in November and she mentors Seaview Celtic’s schoolgirls teams too.

Clearly, a terrific player and person and scorer of a terrific goal this week to boot. On the back of arguably their best result to date, the Blues (and Mia) deserve your support this weekend for what should be a very tasty derby match against Cork City. Kickoff is three o’clock on Saturday at the RSC.