Wales great Fishlock achieves career dream

Jess Fishlock is undoubtedly the greatest player in all of Welsh women’s football.

The greatest male player would stoke debates. It is easy to make the case for John Charles or Gareth Bale but perhaps you preferred Cliff Jones or Ian Rush – or maybe you were a Neville Southall enthusiast.

However, any discussion about Wales’ greatest female footballer would be brief.

Fishlock has won numerous club titles, twice winning the Champions League, and twice winning the NWSL MVP award in 2022. She also has long-standing experience playing for Seattle Reign in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) for Seattle Reign.

Yet despite clocking up more air miles as a player than many pilots, Fishlock has always remained available for her country, having represented Wales 162 times since her debut in Switzerland in 2006.

For the first 19 years, Fishlock has been representing Wales, always upholding the highest standards and tirelessly urging the country to reach the biggest stage of football.

Sometimes things get harder when you’re getting closer to a dream you can’t get. So it was for Fishlock and for Wales. In advancing to the major finals, there have been three near misses in a row.

Fishlock would join the list of the greatest players never to compete in a major international tournament, a list already brimming with Welsh players like Gary Speed, Ryan Giggs, Rush, and Southall.

A pioneer of women’s football who has won numerous awards and raised her team-mates throughout her trophy-filled club career has made the dream a reality for her.

“You don’t play for this long unless it means so much to you,” Fishlock told BBB Sport Wales.

“I don’t think I can put into words how much playing for Wales means to me.

“We have had instances where we ought to have gotten into a major tournament,” he said.

Can I get to a major tournament? is a big story that has permeated my entire international career. Can we get to a major tournament? ‘ We have fought so hard throughout.

Fishlock’s journey to professional football would be a familiar one, if at the time a pathway had existed for a football-mad girl from Cardiff to play the game professionally.

She was a young girl who spent her early years in Llanrumney, just playing in the garden with her brothers. “Brother James recalls that is where it all began.

Her love for football developed further at a soccer camp in Cardiff during the summer holidays.

My mother suggested that I accompany her and that my older sister wanted to attend the camp, “Fishlock recalls.

That is what I wanted to do right away.

” Jess would be up and she would want to be in the garden, she’d be over here, over there, wouldn’t matter if it was a mud pile, Jess would be out in it, “Fishlock’s mother Sharon remembers.

Fishlock was having dreams about it when she wasn’t playing football.

Jessica was the one who used to go to bed before going to bed, according to her father, Kevyn.

With her talent increasingly clear, Cardiff City Ladies fast-tracked Fishlock, who joined the club aged seven, making her first team debut at 15.

Sister Kathyrn says, “She used to say she wanted to be a professional football player when she was 14 years old, and I used to mock her because there was no such thing as a female professional football player at the time,” as she does now.

Fishlock became the first player in the Eredivisie to play abroad when she joined the amateur side in 2008 and then made her debut in Wales with a move to the Netherlands.

Back-to-back titles followed but it was far from easy for a young woman who had never been away from her family.

When she wasn’t playing, she was also washing dishes in the stadium, Kathryn continued.

Fishlock has accomplished her goals by playing all over the world.

She helped Bristol win the FA Cup in 2011 and won the Women’s Super League players’ player of the year award at the end of her second season with the organization.

Fishlock then joined Melbourne Victory in Australia, leading the team to two Grand Finals, including the club’s first title in 2013, with Fishlock named player of the match in the final.

Since joining Reign in 2013, Fishlock has won three NWSL titles and three titles while working for the club on loan.

Before once more winning the Australian league with Melbourne City in 2016, 2017 and 2018, Fishlock won the Scottish title with Glasgow in 2014. He then won the German league and the Champions League with Frankfurt in 2015.

In 2019, Fishlock helped Lyon win both the first division title and the Champions League, meaning she won league titles for seven successive seasons.

Her brother James refers to her as the best player I have ever seen play the game.

For Fishlock, Seattle has been her semi-permanent home for more than ten years, where she met her now-wife, Tziarra King, an ex-teammate.

Fishlock and King were married in 2023 and LGBTQ+ advocacy has always been a big priority for Fishlock, who says she was bullied at school because of her sexuality.

For her contributions to women’s football and the LGBT community, Fishlock received an MBE in 2018 and a Fellowship at Aberystwyth University in 2024.

A mural of Fishlock was only recently unveiled on a Splott (Cardiff) pitch.

” You are proud, proud of her for achieving what she’s achieved – nobody else has done it. Sister Francesca says, “I’m more proud that she’s now able to be her true authentic self no matter where she is.” You really can’t ask for more, “says the man.

However, while Fishlock should be at national treasure status, former Wales captain and UEFA executive committee member Laura McAllister says she has been celebrated less than she deserves.

Fishlock’s desire to compete at the top with Wales has seemed like less of a fantasy in the past decade with increased spending from the Football Association of Wales leading to steady progress for the international side.

Under Jayne Ludlow’s leadership, they almost qualified for the World Cup and European Championship, respectively. Despite having the same points total and significantly superior goal difference, Wales still fell short of Northern Ireland in terms of away goals scored.

It was a similar story in 2022 – Wales beaten in a World Cup play-off final in (again) Switzerland, losing 2-1 to the Swiss in the final seconds of extra time, with a penalty shootout looming.

Fishlock has contemplated retiring from international football after failing every time.

I had no idea what to do after Switzerland. Can I do two more years? Can I get over my heartache? It took a while for me to recover from that defeat, which was a little soul-destroying, to be honest.

Yet she continued, never stopped chasing the dream and eventually, it came to fruition.

With Slovakia in the semi-finals, Wales qualified for the Euro 2025 play-offs after winning their Nations League B Group.

Disaster struck as a result of Fishlock’s calf injury, which kept him out for a month before the match and made it impossible for him to start as a sub in the home leg. With Wales 2-0 down and facing a crisis, Fishlock entered the fray and created a goal for Ffion Morgan.

Fishlock, of course, scored the goal in Cardiff that gave Wales a 2-0 lead, with Fishlock scoring Ceri Holland’s injury-time winner after 120 minutes of play.

In the play-off final, Wales defeated the Republic of Ireland 1-1, before the dramatic second leg in Dublin, where a 2-1 Welsh victory saw them finally make history and make their first-ever bid for a major tournament. Lily Woodham also had assist in the match.

After the match Fishlock told the pitchside BBC reporter that it was” the proudest moment, “of her career.

In the end, the euphoria has been enhanced with a different emotion. a relief, perhaps.

” There was a big element of, you know, oh my god, finally, “Fishlock said.

This has finally occurred. And there was a relief, which I didn’t anticipate. Maybe I just hadn’t realised how kind of big it had been weighing on me for all these years until that moment. And so, for me, relief and joy were evident, but also relief in particular.

“I can’t believe we did it,” I thought.

Finally the greatest female footballer Wales has ever produced will represent her country on the biggest stage.