While much of the focus on last weekend’s FAI International Football Awards was on Keith Andrews winning the Senior International Player of the Year gong, goalkeeper Emma Byrne (right) quietly added yet another honour to her rather immense collection, the Senior Women’s International Player of the Year.

The 33-year-old from Kildare, who first took up football at Coláiste Chiarán in Leixlip, joined Arsenal in 1998, also spending two seasons with Fortuna Hjorring in Denmark. And since then she’s assembled many medals with her club, the highlight the ‘quadruple’ in 2007, and close to 100 caps for her country.

But a largely unheralded Irish sporting star she remains. As she said herself a few years back: “People seem to think we get loads of money, that we’re really rich, which is pretty bad when they expect you to buy all the rounds. It’s just like a normal job, it’s just average pay, but it’s easier for us because we’re doing what we love.”