It is close to three years since she last donned the Primrose and Blue in a competitive game, but as she continues to recover from her latest injury setback, Jenny Higgins is hopeful of lining out for Roscommon again in the future.

After featuring for the Connacht side in their TG4 All-Ireland intermediate football championship semi-final defeat to Wexford on July 10th of the previous year, Higgins missed out on the 2023 intercounty season to place her full focus on a new adventure in Australia with AFL Women’s outfit Sydney Swans.

Yet just a week before she was due to make her AFLW bow, Higgins suffered an anterior cruciate ligament injury in a match scrimmage (informal practice game) against Brisbane Lions.

She eventually bounced back to play a part in Clann na nGael’s excellent senior club championship final success over St. Brigid’s last September and had subsequently returned to the county set-up by the end of 2024.

However, Higgins sustained a second ACL injury (on the opposite knee to the one she damaged in Australia) at Roscommon training in Johnstown last December and this has unfortunately left her sidelined for another extended period.

“I still feel very much unfinished business with the sport and I was back in better shape than I ever was after the first ACL.

“That’s the thing about ACL recovery in many ways. It gives you time to focus on things that, with the intercounty season being so condensed, you don’t actually get an off-season to work on areas of your game,” Higgins explained.

“The great thing about having that time away, if you channel it and you’ve the right mindset going into it, you can actually come back better. Be a better athlete, a better person and a better player as a result of it.

“I’m just hoping to use this opportunity again to be better. It’s still a bit off yet. It won’t be this year, but you never know what next year will bring.” Higgins hasn’t exactly been looking on from the outside at Roscommon’s season to date as she ultimately decided to remain with the squad during her ACL rehabilitation.

Additionally, Roscommon manager Finbar Egan — her former Clann na nGael manager who was previously involved when Mayo won four All-Ireland senior titles from 1999 to 2003 — was also quick to bring Higgins on board as part of his backroom set-up for the year to help make up in some way for her loss on the pitch.

“Initially I wanted probably to step away from it. You’re so disappointed. You had such expectations of the year and it’s hard to be on the sideline again. It felt so raw because it felt like I was only back. I was back doing what I love and back to my best, and then to kind of think ‘oh God, I’m on the sideline again’.

“Thankfully I’ve great support there with Finbar Egan and Marie Kelly, on the management team with Roscommon. They wouldn’t take no for an answer and they wanted me in on the management team. They felt I could offer a lot of experience and we’ve quite a young squad, so they weren’t letting me get away.

“It was great to be involved and the girls are great. They celebrate all the little wins with me. Whether it is my first jump there in the gym one day, they were all celebrating with me. Or my first run. It just makes it that bit easier, having that community and that support network around you,” she highlighted.

Higgins will certainly have a significant part to play behind the scenes as Roscommon embark on their latest quest to win a first TG4 All-Ireland intermediate football championship since 2005.

In order to reach the knockout rounds of this year’s competition, the Rossies — who were relegated from Division Two of the Lidl National Football League back in March — will need to progress out of a Group 1 that also includes 2024 All-Ireland junior winners Fermanagh and the runners-up of tomorrow’s Leinster decider between Laois and Westmeath.

“There’s nothing easy about that group at all. Fermanagh did really well in their league campaign as well (reaching the Division Four final). They’re a really good side. Laois and Westmeath, we have great history with them throughout the years. There’ll be huge games coming up.

“We know we need to be fully ready in order to compete with them, but we do feel like on any day, if we have our best players on the pitch and if we turn up and be the best we can be, then we are able to compete with the best of them.”

As well as her day job as a primary school teacher, Higgins is being kept busy in her role as an ambassador for the LGFA’s Glenveagh Homes Gaelic4Girls programme.

A ten-week initiative that incorporates coaching sessions with fun non-competitive blitzes aimed at increasing participation in Ladies Gaelic Football, Higgins has been on board with this programme since Glenveagh became its main title sponsor in 2021.

Her involvement in Gaelic4Girls actually predates the Kildare-based company’s partnership on this project with the LGFA — it was first launched all the way back in 2008 — and she continues to derive great pleasure from her work with this initiative.

“I’ve been involved with the Glenveagh Homes Gaelic4Girls programme for a number of years now. Each year I find it going from strength to strength. It’s particularly rewarding being a primary school teacher and being once a young girl myself, knowing the importance of sport,” Higgins added.

“The impact that can have on girls, particularly ladies’ football. It’s wonderful to get involved and promote it. Especially when we do our club visits. Probably the most rewarding part is we get to go out in the community and see the impact the programme is having on the local communities, on the girls and even on the families.

“We’re very fortunate to have Glenveagh involved. They’re to be hugely admired, it has gone from strength to strength, the investment and promotion that they put into it. To see the numbers that clubs are getting out as a result of having the Gaelic4Girls programme, it’s just fantastic,” she concluded.