Leah Eddie considers Hibs future and how far she's come after reaching appearance milestone

Leah Eddie is “really enjoying her time” at Hibs and is proud of how far she has come after overcoming a few obstacles, but she isn’t looking too far into the future.

She knows only too well that you never know what is round the corner. The 21-year-old Scottish international defender signed for the club back in 2018 from Rangers. Her Hibs career could not have gotten off to a worst start when a knee injury kept her out for most of the 2019 season, with the pandemic causing further disruption the following year. After all that upheaval, Eddie believes reaching 50 appearances is an “even bigger achievement”.

She explains: “My main focus coming back from injury was game time, training to high standards, and getting a spot in that starting 11. To get 50 appearances so soon after that injury … it does make it an even bigger achievement for me personally and something that was probably not unrealistic and wasn’t my main focus.

“I’ve signed till 2024, so far everything has gone to plan personally, but, as a team, we are really setting off to a place where we have never been before. I know it’s quite early into the season, but we are hoping to to get up as high in the table as we can before the Christmas break. But I’m enjoying my time here and I’m not looking to end that anytime soon. I’m just going to take each season as it comes and hopefully, we can do well as a team, and I can do well as an individual.”

Leah Eddie has now made 50 appearances for Hibs and is contracted until 2024. Picture: Hibernian FC

Eddie has consistently impressed with her performance levels over the past couple of years. Her form earned her a Scotland cap in June 2021. “It was good, it’s obviously a big step up”, she told Edinburgh Evening News. “It’s something that I wasn’t used to. I had been involved in the youth set up and the youth under 15s, 16s and 17s, but my focus when getting back from injury was just to get back fit and back on the pitch.

“To be called up in my first season back was a really proud moment, but I wasn’t trying to just focus on just that. I still had a lot of work to do to get back to full fitness and performing for the club as well as getting a spot in the national team. It’s a big step going there, training away with high-performance athletes you can see the difference when you go in. It’s just when you go back to the club you try to bring that into the training and try and implement that as much as you can.”

Hibs endured a shaky start to the season but a recent surge in form has pushed them up to fifth in the table, one place above Spartans and one place behind Hearts. Eddie scored direct from a corner in the 3-1 win away to Aberdeen on Wednesday.

With games coming thick and fast, Hibs face second-tier Kilmarnock next in the SWPL Cup quarter-final at Rugby Park on Sunday. Eddie said: “Same again, we will recover on Thursday, prepare Friday, Saturday and hopefully reach the semi-finals after we play Kilmarnock but… we will take Sunday as it comes.”