You know you’ve had a decent year when someone decides to name a bus after you.
Keira Walsh’s 2022 roll call is so all-encompassing, it borders on greedy. Euro 2022 winner. Player of the Match in the final, and selected in the Team of the Tournament. World-record transfer to footballing royalty, Barcelona. Yet for all of the team and individual prizes that the 25-year-old has amassed in the past 12 months, nothing represents the rapid growth in her profile like nominative transportation. ‘Surreal’ doesn’t cut it.
The bus company, Rosso, run a service in the north west from Rossendale to Walsh’s hometown of Rochdale. When the midfielder learned they had anointed one of their fleet in her honour, she thought it was a wind-up.
“My mum told me and I thought she was just messing around,” she laughs, modestly. “I said, ‘Come off it, there hasn’t been a bus named after me – who’d do that?’ Things like that are so out of the blue and out of the ordinary. But it’s nice. It’s cool and it’s funny – definitely a conversation starter.”
Ever since she impressed as the Lionesses’ midfield metronome in their historic triumph at Wembley last summer, Walsh’s life has been such a whirlwind that she hasn’t found time to take a trip on her own bus yet. Being the world’s most expensive player and turning out each week for a dominant force in the women’s game will have that effect.
However, her journey to the pinnacle of that her ascent could have ended prematurely with her crashing back down to Earth, were it not for the support of people around her. Without them and the intervention of a sports psychologist, Walsh would have quit the game she loves, three years before her life-changing career apex.
