Sunday 31st July 2022 is a day I’ll never forget. I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous as I was walking onto the pitch. Ever since that final whistle went it’s been a dream come true. Nine long, hard weeks of training camp paid off in the best way – and the celebrations at the end of the game with all our friends and family there, it was just surreal.
I remember when the match began, my first touch of the ball I gave it away. I kept telling myself ‘Just ease yourself in’ but I was rattled. It was the encouragement from girls around me that took all that away, settling my nerves. It’s funny because you focus so hard when you’re on the ball that you can block out all the noise from the crowd, but then there’ll be parts of the game where you’ll look up or hear some shout and it just hits you, there’s 87,000 people watching you right now.
After I came off at full-time, all I could do was impatiently watch that extra time clock run down. At 115 minutes I kept tapping Ellie Roebuck saying ‘We’ve done it!’ and she turned to me like ‘G, there’s still five minutes left!’. Waiting for that final whistle was the longest five minutes of my life – but when it went, the relief was intense. Then came the celebrations, which for me lasted two days before my body couldn’t handle any more!
I got into football really young. I come from a sporty family with three brothers so growing up you either join in with them, or you get the ball kicked at you. Once I got involved, I never looked back. I played at my older brother's football team until I was 12, after which boys and girls weren’t allowed to play sports together. I had to take a year off football because there was nowhere near me, in Barrow-in-Furness, that had a girls' football team big enough. I pestered my parents the whole time to take me to the nearest club that could train me – which was Blackburn Rovers, two hours away. They relented and took me for a trial and within 30 minutes, the manager told my parents they wanted to sign me. I was screaming with happiness all the way home.
When I started playing football, there wasn't a professional league for women.
I knew there and then football was my future, but this was 10 years ago and there wasn’t a professional league for women. I remember going to a careers fair when I was 16 and one of the mentors asked what I wanted to be when I was older. I told her, ‘I want to be a professional footballer’. I still have such a vivid picture of her face – it was clear she thought that was never going to happen. I just thought to myself, ‘I’m going to prove you wrong, I’m going to do something special.' I got lucky in a sense because the year I turned 18, the Women’s Super League turned professional.
Women do have to be more pragmatic when it comes to football though, there’s no guarantee you’re going to make enough money to support yourself for life. So, I kept my grades up and trained as a coach at Manchester City in order to have something to fall back on. But by the time I was 19, I was called up to play for England and I knew I had to give football my everything.
For me, the emotional obstacles have come more from training away from my family, they’re my safe space. For a tournament like the Euros, camp is high pressure and long; you see the same faces every day and there are times you just need a break from thinking about football, but you can’t. You have to try and find new ways to switch off in those instances.
I always think back to my parents and how much they sacrificed taking me to training all those years; that made seeing them celebrating in the stands when we won so incredible, it was the best feeling for me.
My hope is that with our win, we’ve created a big enough fan base that people will continue watching and supporting us in other tournaments. We’ve got to make the game attractive by putting ourselves out there and connecting with people on a personal level. I think that’s how we maintain interest and in turn, ensure more girls have access to football and build the next generation of talent. I’ve already had conversations with people telling me that they’re creating girls' football teams, or that they’ve got so many more girls on board that they need extra coaches. It feels so incredible to know we’ve inspired a new generation; all we wanted was to be role models for girls like us.