Roche eager to rejoin Ireland’s road to women’s World Cup 2019

Irish international Stephanie Roche is in a race against time to be fit for the big World Cup qualifiers against Slovakia and the Netherlands in April after suffering a setback in her recovery from a serious injury she sustained last September.

“It was in the Northern Ireland game (which the Republic won 2-0 away),” the Sunderland striker says of the original injury. “It was the last minute or close enough and I went up for a header and somebody hit into me and I landed awkwardly on my knee.

"It hyper-extended and straight away they thought it was my ACL, just from the way that I landed. So when I heard that it wasn’t my ACL I was over the moon. That’s obviously the worst thing that it could have been, but I did have a tibial plateau fracture.