ONE MONTH AFTER giving birth to her son, Cillian, last autumn, Jenny Higgins underwent knee surgery in the hope of returning to inter-county football.
During pregnancy, the Roscommon midfielder had been recovering from a second ACL injury. A complication arose in the form of a cyclops lesion – effectively a wad of scar tissue in the middle of the knee which stopped it from straightening – but a scan wasn’t risked mid-maternity.
Once Cillian arrived safely into the world, Higgins began plotting and planning her path back to the primrose and blue.
“I had Cillian on 25 October 2025, and four weeks later, I was in for surgery on the cyclops lesion,” she tells The 42.
“In the back of your mind it’s, ‘I need to get this sorted ASAP if I want to get back playing for Roscommon’, and that’s reality. Part of you is like, ‘I’m so fresh postpartum here, the baby is so small’, but then at the same time, if I don’t do it now, you could miss out on a big chunk.
“Returning from pregnancy was one thing, but an ACL is a whole different ball game.”
The comeback was far from straightforward, owing to another knee setback, but nine months and eight days after becoming a mother, Higgins was part of the Roscommon team that won the All-Ireland ladies football intermediate title.
Cillian was at the heart of the celebrations in Croke Park, along with another baby, seven-month-old Éanna, son of Higgins’ teammate and close friend Laura Mannion.
“We grew up playing together and no doubt the two boys will do the same,” Higgins smiles.
Higgins (left) with her son Cillian, and Laura Mannion with her son Eanna on the steps of the Hogan Stand. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
Mannion's son Eanna plays in the Hogan Stand tunnel, with Higgins and Cillian pictured in the background. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
“There is a part of you during the pregnancy, you think that you might never get back. But it is those moments and thinking of them in the future, when they look back and they ask, you don’t want them to say, ‘Well, why did you stop playing football?’ ‘Oh, because I had a baby.’ You want to say, ‘I had a baby, and this is what happened, and we actually had even more special moments together afterwards.’”
This was a common theme at GAA HQ in recent weeks. Before Higgins and Mannion on All-Ireland ladies football finals day, Antrim duo Áine Tubridy and Ciara Browne celebrated junior glory with their sons, while mother-of-four Edel Hayden was on the losing Carlow side. Emma Costello’s evening ended in disappointment, but her toddler daughter Mollie watched her star for Kerry in the senior decider.
In the All-Ireland senior camogie final the following weekend, Shauna Healy came off the Galway bench just four months after giving birth to her second child, Pippa. Her story was highlighted in the build-up, but Cavan duo Rosie Crowe-McKeever and Christina O’Reilly were examples of other mothers lining out on camogie’s biggest day.
“A lot of women probably feel like they do have to maybe give up once they have a baby, but it’s great to see loads who got back playing at an elite level,” says Higgins.
“I suppose you do get to a stage in your career and a stage in life where children do come on the agenda. You put it off because you think, ‘If I have a baby, I won’t be able to come back.’ If I was to go back even a couple of years, I would have had children earlier. Part of you is a little bit selfish; you want to keep playing at an elite level and question if you’d be able to get back.
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“But then after actually going through it, I now realise that actually you can. You do need to have huge support, but you can get back to the level that you played at post-baby. A lot of women might put off even having children because you’re kind of trying to choose. There is a stage in your life where you’re like, ‘Do I want to have children or do I want to keep playing my sport?’ But you can do both, and testament to all those ladies. It’s not easy, but you can definitely do both if you have the right support network around you.”
In that same breath, there’s a word for her husband, former Roscommon footballer Cathal Shine, and their parents, all of whom she “wouldn’t be able to do it without”.
In action for Roscommon in 2022. Tom Maher / INPHO
Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO
The last few years have been a whirlwind for Higgins. After 12 senior seasons and over 130 appearances for her beloved Roscommon, she signed for AFLW side Sydney Swans in March 2023. Having previously caught the eye at a combine before the Covid-19 pandemic, the opportunity to play professional sport was a dream. She parked her teaching career at the age of 31 and herself and Cathal moved their life Down Under.
But a week before Higgins was due to make her debut that September, she tore her ACL in a practice game. One silver lining: “I had everything over there to come back and be better. I was fitter, faster, stronger.”
The following October, she played a starring role on home soil as Clann na nGael won the Roscommon senior championship, and she was aiming for an inter-county return. But disaster struck in pre-season in December. A second ACL injury in 15 months, the other knee this time.
As the long road back began with surgery, Higgins soon discovered she was pregnant. Gym work and rehabilitation continued with a baby on board. The cyclops lesion was a challenge, but that was dealt with shortly after Cillian arrived. Everything was going to plan with a championship comeback targeted, but a “freak thing” set her back again in February.
A cartilage fissure – or crack in her knee cartilage – ground her return to running to an immediate halt, and threatened her sporting career as a whole. The severe swelling was impacting her day-to-day life with Cillian, never mind rehab.
But Higgins persisted, and after months of hard work and frustration, her knee “started playing ball” in June, and she returned to Roscommon training before the All-Ireland series. She would have loved a few more weeks to stake a claim for minutes, but to make the matchday panel for the final against Fermanagh was a huge achievement in itself.
“Returning from pregnancy probably was overshadowed a bit by my knee because that was such a turbulent time,” she reflects.
“You’re trying to juggle a little newborn baby that relies on you for everything, but you still have to get your rehab in. It took a lot of juggling. I used to just pick up the gear bag and go out the door, but now you have to book in the babysitters and the grandparents and the husband and make sure that your trainings aren’t on the same days and all that before you even pick up the gear bag!
‘Every challenge that we face is the opportunity to become more than we’ve been before’ 🫶🏼
Thank you for the overwhelming amount of well wishes and messages over the last week ❤️ ACL surgery is complete and the road to recovery has begun. ✅ #ACL#AFLW#LGFA#To2024pic.twitter.com/s1YRoMhW8O
“Don’t get me wrong, there were loads of times when I was like, ‘I’m done with this,’ thinking about giving up and all that. After doing one ACL and going through one year of rehab, getting back to my best and then a couple of months later doing the other one and then like having all the complications, the easy thing would have been to say that’s enough. Especially at my stage in my career, nobody would have been surprised.
“But in the back of my mind, I just wanted to prove that you could get back. I’ve always been one of those people: Tell me I can’t do something and watch me do it. Every consultant I went to, every physio, it was, ‘I don’t know.’ I was like, ‘Well, watch me do it. I’m going to do it.’
“Very much in the back of my mind was Cillian as well. Sport has been a huge part of my life for a long time. When he grows up, it’s going to be stuff that we talk about. I just didn’t want the story to be, ‘I had a baby, so I had to stop,’ or ‘I got an injury, I had to stop.’ Instead, I wanted the story to be, ‘Well, I had all of these difficulties and challenges, in life and in sport, but if you do work hard, and if you stick to the process, trust the process, and give it your all, there’s nothing you can’t achieve.’”
The doubts and fears were more knee-related, with Higgins “pleasantly surprised” by the postpartum return to football. It’s something she, Mannion and other returning mothers have discussed, but there are no shortage of hurdles, all the same.
“Before you have the baby, you kind of think you won’t be able to get there, but you’ve trained at an elite level for nearly 20 years. Throughout your pregnancy, you’re training away. It is hard because the research isn’t really there. I felt a bit kind of lost.
“I was lucky because I was going through the ACL, I had Tommy Mooney (Head of S&C at UPMC Sports Surgery Clinic) and John Gilligan (Roscommon S&C), who understood me and were able to push me on a bit. Me exercising through pregnancy isn’t the same as the general public exercising through pregnancy, yet the research is kind of the same.
Áine Tubridy with her son Cahir after the All-Ireland intermediate final. Shauna Clinton / SPORTSFILE
Shauna Clinton / SPORTSFILE / SPORTSFILE
“I was still split squatting 50kg four days before pregnancy, but was that anywhere in the research? No. You’re kind of taking risks really. You’re not sure, but you’re trying to listen to your body. Because you have 20 years of experience, a lot of S&C by the time you have the baby, you’re going in with a good knowledge and understanding of how your body feels, what you’re able to tolerate and things like that. But there’s not a whole pile of research there for that.
“As for postpartum, you have the baby, and again it’s kind of one size fits all. The physio and the midwives and all, it’s like, ‘Do nothing for six weeks and then after six weeks you can return to everything,’ and I’m going, ‘So I do nothing for six weeks, and then I can just play midfield again?!’
“A lot needs to be done in terms of general research. That’s why it’s great to see the likes of Laura, myself, and all the other mammies that have come back, to see that you can keep training through your pregnancy and it’s okay. You’re not putting your child at risk, you’re not putting your pregnancy at risk, which is a huge fear every time you go to the gym during pregnancy, you’re like, ‘Am I doing too much? Am I harming my baby, or am I okay to do this?’ A lot of it is, unfortunately, left to your own devices.”
Former Kerry footballer and Ireland rugby and basketball star Louise Galvin was a “huge example” for Higgins, while she also looked to AFLW and soccer for inspiration and encouragement as players documented their return from pregnancy.
“The way that the world is now, women are so active and there are so many female athletes that are having a pregnancy and then coming back and playing at their elite level again. You really zone in on it. Serena Williams and Sonia O’Sullivan participated while pregnant. When you’re going through it, those stories really do comfort you.
“Obviously the pregnancy is the most important thing in the world, but for your mental and physical health, it’s so important to be active. Postpartum, you’re not going to take nine months of a break if you want to get back to where you’re at. It’s just trying to balance all that and just have the right guidance and the right people involved to direct you.”
Higgins with Cillian after Roscommon's win. Ben Brady / INPHO
Ben Brady / INPHO / INPHO
Education and changing perception, Higgins believes, is key around training during pregnancy.
“There were so many people that were saying, ‘Would you calm down? You shouldn’t be lifting a grocery bag,’ and here’s me split squatting whatever in the gym and deadlifting and RDLs, the lot!
“There are heads turning still when you go in. It was literally four days before Cillian came and you’re going in with the big bump, you’re lifting fairly heavy. It’s just to change that mindset and change the times. It’s different if you haven’t done exercise your whole life and you’re taking it up. There’s no way you should be doing that, but if your lifestyle has always been to be active, there’s no reason why you can’t continue that.”
The parting word is saved for the man of the moment, Cillian.
“I’ve created a little machine, he’s flying it,” Higgins laughs, as the memories of August Bank holiday Sunday and Roscommon’s All-Ireland success come flooding back.
“It’s all worthwhile in the end. To have Cillian with me there in Croke Park made all those ups and downs over the last couple of years worthwhile. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
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'Returning from pregnancy was one thing, but an ACL is a whole different ball game'
ONE MONTH AFTER giving birth to her son, Cillian, last autumn, Jenny Higgins underwent knee surgery in the hope of returning to inter-county football.
During pregnancy, the Roscommon midfielder had been recovering from a second ACL injury. A complication arose in the form of a cyclops lesion – effectively a wad of scar tissue in the middle of the knee which stopped it from straightening – but a scan wasn’t risked mid-maternity.
Once Cillian arrived safely into the world, Higgins began plotting and planning her path back to the primrose and blue.
“I had Cillian on 25 October 2025, and four weeks later, I was in for surgery on the cyclops lesion,” she tells The 42.
“In the back of your mind it’s, ‘I need to get this sorted ASAP if I want to get back playing for Roscommon’, and that’s reality. Part of you is like, ‘I’m so fresh postpartum here, the baby is so small’, but then at the same time, if I don’t do it now, you could miss out on a big chunk.
“Returning from pregnancy was one thing, but an ACL is a whole different ball game.”
The comeback was far from straightforward, owing to another knee setback, but nine months and eight days after becoming a mother, Higgins was part of the Roscommon team that won the All-Ireland ladies football intermediate title.
Cillian was at the heart of the celebrations in Croke Park, along with another baby, seven-month-old Éanna, son of Higgins’ teammate and close friend Laura Mannion.
“We grew up playing together and no doubt the two boys will do the same,” Higgins smiles.
“There is a part of you during the pregnancy, you think that you might never get back. But it is those moments and thinking of them in the future, when they look back and they ask, you don’t want them to say, ‘Well, why did you stop playing football?’ ‘Oh, because I had a baby.’ You want to say, ‘I had a baby, and this is what happened, and we actually had even more special moments together afterwards.’”
This was a common theme at GAA HQ in recent weeks. Before Higgins and Mannion on All-Ireland ladies football finals day, Antrim duo Áine Tubridy and Ciara Browne celebrated junior glory with their sons, while mother-of-four Edel Hayden was on the losing Carlow side. Emma Costello’s evening ended in disappointment, but her toddler daughter Mollie watched her star for Kerry in the senior decider.
In the All-Ireland senior camogie final the following weekend, Shauna Healy came off the Galway bench just four months after giving birth to her second child, Pippa. Her story was highlighted in the build-up, but Cavan duo Rosie Crowe-McKeever and Christina O’Reilly were examples of other mothers lining out on camogie’s biggest day.
“A lot of women probably feel like they do have to maybe give up once they have a baby, but it’s great to see loads who got back playing at an elite level,” says Higgins.
“I suppose you do get to a stage in your career and a stage in life where children do come on the agenda. You put it off because you think, ‘If I have a baby, I won’t be able to come back.’ If I was to go back even a couple of years, I would have had children earlier. Part of you is a little bit selfish; you want to keep playing at an elite level and question if you’d be able to get back.
“But then after actually going through it, I now realise that actually you can. You do need to have huge support, but you can get back to the level that you played at post-baby. A lot of women might put off even having children because you’re kind of trying to choose. There is a stage in your life where you’re like, ‘Do I want to have children or do I want to keep playing my sport?’ But you can do both, and testament to all those ladies. It’s not easy, but you can definitely do both if you have the right support network around you.”
In that same breath, there’s a word for her husband, former Roscommon footballer Cathal Shine, and their parents, all of whom she “wouldn’t be able to do it without”.
The last few years have been a whirlwind for Higgins. After 12 senior seasons and over 130 appearances for her beloved Roscommon, she signed for AFLW side Sydney Swans in March 2023. Having previously caught the eye at a combine before the Covid-19 pandemic, the opportunity to play professional sport was a dream. She parked her teaching career at the age of 31 and herself and Cathal moved their life Down Under.
But a week before Higgins was due to make her debut that September, she tore her ACL in a practice game. One silver lining: “I had everything over there to come back and be better. I was fitter, faster, stronger.”
The following October, she played a starring role on home soil as Clann na nGael won the Roscommon senior championship, and she was aiming for an inter-county return. But disaster struck in pre-season in December. A second ACL injury in 15 months, the other knee this time.
As the long road back began with surgery, Higgins soon discovered she was pregnant. Gym work and rehabilitation continued with a baby on board. The cyclops lesion was a challenge, but that was dealt with shortly after Cillian arrived. Everything was going to plan with a championship comeback targeted, but a “freak thing” set her back again in February.
A cartilage fissure – or crack in her knee cartilage – ground her return to running to an immediate halt, and threatened her sporting career as a whole. The severe swelling was impacting her day-to-day life with Cillian, never mind rehab.
But Higgins persisted, and after months of hard work and frustration, her knee “started playing ball” in June, and she returned to Roscommon training before the All-Ireland series. She would have loved a few more weeks to stake a claim for minutes, but to make the matchday panel for the final against Fermanagh was a huge achievement in itself.
“Returning from pregnancy probably was overshadowed a bit by my knee because that was such a turbulent time,” she reflects.
“You’re trying to juggle a little newborn baby that relies on you for everything, but you still have to get your rehab in. It took a lot of juggling. I used to just pick up the gear bag and go out the door, but now you have to book in the babysitters and the grandparents and the husband and make sure that your trainings aren’t on the same days and all that before you even pick up the gear bag!
“Don’t get me wrong, there were loads of times when I was like, ‘I’m done with this,’ thinking about giving up and all that. After doing one ACL and going through one year of rehab, getting back to my best and then a couple of months later doing the other one and then like having all the complications, the easy thing would have been to say that’s enough. Especially at my stage in my career, nobody would have been surprised.
“But in the back of my mind, I just wanted to prove that you could get back. I’ve always been one of those people: Tell me I can’t do something and watch me do it. Every consultant I went to, every physio, it was, ‘I don’t know.’ I was like, ‘Well, watch me do it. I’m going to do it.’
“Very much in the back of my mind was Cillian as well. Sport has been a huge part of my life for a long time. When he grows up, it’s going to be stuff that we talk about. I just didn’t want the story to be, ‘I had a baby, so I had to stop,’ or ‘I got an injury, I had to stop.’ Instead, I wanted the story to be, ‘Well, I had all of these difficulties and challenges, in life and in sport, but if you do work hard, and if you stick to the process, trust the process, and give it your all, there’s nothing you can’t achieve.’”
The doubts and fears were more knee-related, with Higgins “pleasantly surprised” by the postpartum return to football. It’s something she, Mannion and other returning mothers have discussed, but there are no shortage of hurdles, all the same.
“Before you have the baby, you kind of think you won’t be able to get there, but you’ve trained at an elite level for nearly 20 years. Throughout your pregnancy, you’re training away. It is hard because the research isn’t really there. I felt a bit kind of lost.
“I was lucky because I was going through the ACL, I had Tommy Mooney (Head of S&C at UPMC Sports Surgery Clinic) and John Gilligan (Roscommon S&C), who understood me and were able to push me on a bit. Me exercising through pregnancy isn’t the same as the general public exercising through pregnancy, yet the research is kind of the same.
“I was still split squatting 50kg four days before pregnancy, but was that anywhere in the research? No. You’re kind of taking risks really. You’re not sure, but you’re trying to listen to your body. Because you have 20 years of experience, a lot of S&C by the time you have the baby, you’re going in with a good knowledge and understanding of how your body feels, what you’re able to tolerate and things like that. But there’s not a whole pile of research there for that.
“As for postpartum, you have the baby, and again it’s kind of one size fits all. The physio and the midwives and all, it’s like, ‘Do nothing for six weeks and then after six weeks you can return to everything,’ and I’m going, ‘So I do nothing for six weeks, and then I can just play midfield again?!’
“A lot needs to be done in terms of general research. That’s why it’s great to see the likes of Laura, myself, and all the other mammies that have come back, to see that you can keep training through your pregnancy and it’s okay. You’re not putting your child at risk, you’re not putting your pregnancy at risk, which is a huge fear every time you go to the gym during pregnancy, you’re like, ‘Am I doing too much? Am I harming my baby, or am I okay to do this?’ A lot of it is, unfortunately, left to your own devices.”
Former Kerry footballer and Ireland rugby and basketball star Louise Galvin was a “huge example” for Higgins, while she also looked to AFLW and soccer for inspiration and encouragement as players documented their return from pregnancy.
“The way that the world is now, women are so active and there are so many female athletes that are having a pregnancy and then coming back and playing at their elite level again. You really zone in on it. Serena Williams and Sonia O’Sullivan participated while pregnant. When you’re going through it, those stories really do comfort you.
“Obviously the pregnancy is the most important thing in the world, but for your mental and physical health, it’s so important to be active. Postpartum, you’re not going to take nine months of a break if you want to get back to where you’re at. It’s just trying to balance all that and just have the right guidance and the right people involved to direct you.”
Education and changing perception, Higgins believes, is key around training during pregnancy.
“There were so many people that were saying, ‘Would you calm down? You shouldn’t be lifting a grocery bag,’ and here’s me split squatting whatever in the gym and deadlifting and RDLs, the lot!
“There are heads turning still when you go in. It was literally four days before Cillian came and you’re going in with the big bump, you’re lifting fairly heavy. It’s just to change that mindset and change the times. It’s different if you haven’t done exercise your whole life and you’re taking it up. There’s no way you should be doing that, but if your lifestyle has always been to be active, there’s no reason why you can’t continue that.”
The parting word is saved for the man of the moment, Cillian.
“I’ve created a little machine, he’s flying it,” Higgins laughs, as the memories of August Bank holiday Sunday and Roscommon’s All-Ireland success come flooding back.
“It’s all worthwhile in the end. To have Cillian with me there in Croke Park made all those ups and downs over the last couple of years worthwhile. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
*****
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Interview Jenny Higgins Postpartum to Pitch