Lisa Fallon grew up in Dublin and loved soccer. She always wanted to be a coach one day but never saw other women in the role and thought she could never achieve her dreams, she tells Enda McNulty on the latest Rise Higher podcast episode.

After a successful playing career in England, to stay close to the game she then went into sports journalism but finally took the leap of faith in herself and began coaching, getting the breaks her talent deserved.

She was part of the backroom team at Cork City when they won the Premier Division and FAI Cup double in 2017, whilst she also was part of Chelsea FC women’s technical staff when the club won the WSL and Continental League Cup double in 2020.

She worked for Northern Ireland’s men’s national team across two World Cup qualifying campaigns and the Euro 2016 campaign. Fallon was also part of Jim Gavin’s all-conquering Dublin senior football team that won the All-Ireland Football Championship, Leinster Senior Football Championship and Allianz National Football League in 2018.

“Back yourself and never compromise on your dreams,” the now Galway United manager tells Enda. “A great poem that inspired me when I was young was Robert Frost’s, The Road Not Taken. ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow road, and I, I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference’.”

Listen and subscribe to the Rise Higher series on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from.

For more information on performance, resilience and leadership, visit https://www.McNultyPerformance.com.

Rise Higher was produced by https://www.LastCastMedia.com