It Was Never Just Me

I don’t get to have a glass of wine very often.

So I’ll never forget this one….

We’re in Sorrento for my auntie’s 60th. Sitting in a tiny restaurant just off one of the back streets. One of those places you’d totally miss if you didn’t know it was there. 

And it’s perfect: pasta, red wine, all my family together.

The Champions League final comes up in conversation, which I suppose it was always going to. It had only been a couple of weeks since we’d won. Everyone was still talking about it. Remembering bits of the weekend. Who was there. What it felt like.

Then the topic of flights comes up. My sister mentions how much hers had cost.

I didn’t know.

I’m sitting there, looking down at my glass while they’re still talking….

And I start to cry.

I don’t spend a lot of time looking back, if I’m honest. I guess it’s just not how I’m wired.

As a player, you’re always thinking about what’s next. What you need to do tomorrow. How you’ll prepare. How you’re going to contribute.

You can’t stay in a moment for too long. But when I do let myself think about it — even if just for a second, over a rare glass of wine — I always end up back where I grew up.

A small village called Mintlaw, in the north-east of Scotland. About 30 miles north of Aberdeen. If you look at the map of Scotland, it’s right up there in the top corner. Right on the nose. 

You’ll have never heard of it. There’s maybe only 2,500 people in the whole village. Two primary schools. One big roundabout where all the shops are — a petrol station, a chippy, a Chinese. 

That’s about it, really. Maybe some people would say that’s boring. But it was never that for me.

We never went abroad. Camping was our holiday. We’d get the bikes on the racks, pack the tent, and head off somewhere in Scotland — St Andrews, Dumfries & Galloway, the Trossachs.

Long drives. Bickering with my brother, Euan, and sister, Judith. I was always stuck in the middle in the backseat. I don’t know why.

We’d pitch up in the woods, and there were five of us in a four-man tent for a long time. I don’t think my parents realised how big we were getting. Eventually my mum and dad upgraded it.

Finally we had a bit more room to breathe.

It was quite a raw kind of upbringing. Most days were spent outside. Hiking, cycling, kayaking on the lochs. Cooking on the stove — just rice, beans, really simple meals.

And of course, there was football. Hours and hours of it in the garden or across at the fields with my brother and dad, mostly.

To me, it was all a kid could ask for. But as I got a little older, I started to notice something in myself. We’re a really modest family — I think a lot of Scots are. My siblings are probably a bit more outgoing than me. My mum too.

It’s only now that I’ve realised how much like my dad I really am.

My dad was always very active. He’d play rugby or he’d go out running at Aden Park — then he’d come back and go straight into the garage.

I wonder where I’d be without that garage….

It was maybe 10-feet-by-10-feet. Concrete floor. Painted red. I remember that vividly. 

And the cold. I remember that, too. It was freezing. 

Inside there were bikes, ladders — all the usual things. Walls filled with garage crap. Everything in there except a car. Which I thought was supposed to be the whole point of a double-garage, until I saw his set-up!

He’d do his exercise in there. Weights set up in stations. Circuits. 

His own little world. Away from everything.

And he let me inside.

I’d started by watching him train. And then I started to work out with him, too. 

In the winter — when it was too cold for Aden Park or the fields — I’d be in there in the garage doing circuits, or I was clearing a space amongst all the crap and doing keepy-uppies, dribbling, skills.

Inside my head, I had a tick box of what needed to be done. Sometimes I wouldn’t let myself come in for dinner until I’d finished.

I realised I had this — I don’t know what you’d call it — a natural instinct…. Not just that I was good at something. But that I wanted to get better and better at it, too.

When the weather was a little nicer, we’d take the training out of the garage and back into the garden or park. Our house was right next to the park, so we were there most evenings. 

We’d do drills, or we’d do running intervals. These three or four mile runs. Twenty-eight minutes roughly to complete. 

My dad was getting older and I was coming into my prime — still just in my early teens. And I remember the moment I first overtook him, first started pulling away from him. 

I knew I couldn’t slow down after that.

That feeling of just keeping going.

That feeling of just one more lap.

Even when dinner is on the table. Even when everyone else had gone home.

I’ve always spent quite a lot of time by myself. I think I need it. Even now, at training, there are so many people around that I’ll try and find little pockets of time where I can step away for a bit. 

After breakfast, I’ll go and cycle on my own. I like being slightly outside of the busyness of the day. I don’t think it’s hiding. It’s just finding a moment to breathe.

My teammates know what I’m like by now.

I remember being at the cinema with Steph and Beth, and one of them suggested going back to theirs after. And I was just like, “Yeah .… I’m going to leave now.”

When my battery is draining, I have to just go.

But in my head, I’m still thinking: Was that awkward? That was awkward, wasn't it?

I think I’m always doing that. Asking myself questions, trying to learn. If something works, you try to understand why. If it doesn’t, you try to adjust it. Just so the next time you’re in that situation, you’re a little bit more prepared for it.

In games, or after training, I’ll find myself thinking, not just about my performance, but…. Could I have spoken to that person differently? Could I have handled that situation in another way? 

Luckily, that time after the movie, the girls just laughed. In a bigger group, I usually just slip out without telling anyone….

I get to a point where I have to just go. I’m never rude with it. But I’ve come to understand that’s who I am. And I think that’s probably always been there.

I think I’ve always been more comfortable doing my own thing. As long as I’m moving forward.

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I was already playing for Hibs while I was still in school. Studying for my Highers. Working 20-hour weeks on the checkout at Tesco in Ellon.

Honestly, I didn’t really think about it too much. I just thought: I’ll do this for a bit, apply for some universities, maybe I’ll get a scholarship.

And then Arsenal got in touch.

This was 2008. They’d just won the quadruple. Probably the best team in the world at the time. The team was filled with icons. I was 17 and still living at home … and I just went….

Okay. I’ll go play for Arsenal now.

I don’t even think that I was nervous. It really didn’t feel like a huge, dramatic decision. It just felt like the logical next step that I was leaving Tesco, to study and to play with Julie Fleeting, Emma Byrne, Jayne Ludlow, Rachel Yankey, Kelly Smith…. Basically the Mount Rushmore of British and Irish football.

I guess a lot of the things that mattered to me — then and now — didn’t really change. In London, it was still about training, improving, doing the work.

But you have to remember that women’s football was very different back then. 

You brought your own food. I don’t think there was any full-time staff. You just got on with it. You were training yourself, motivating yourself. In a way, I think that actually suited me. It was grounded. It wasn’t quite cooking rice and beans over a camping stove. But it was simple. It just made sense to me.

But there are some things you can’t protect yourself from. Sometimes my career has looked like smooth sailing — looking back at it now, sometimes I’m even tricked into thinking that. But maybe that’s more about how I’ve dealt with things than what’s actually happened to me.

There have been a lot of setbacks. I didn’t really have an injury until I was 26, when I did my ACL. But after that, there were quite a few. Surgeries on my foot, my knee. I broke my leg. Bigger hamstring injuries. Broken fingers. Periods where you’re out for a while, desperately trying to get back.

And I think every time something like that happens, I never really let myself sit in it for too long.

It was always: Okay, this is where I’m at now — what do I need to do to get back?

Over time, that’s what’s allowed me to come back from those moments and still perform at a high level. But that mentality can’t protect you from everything….

This isn’t something I’ve ever really shared openly before. But I want to share it now, because I think it’s important that people see the other side of it.... They just see the games. Maybe they see the injuries. But the challenges aren’t always physical.

There have been two significant periods in my career when I’ve been depressed and on antidepressants.

Times when even getting out of bed felt hard.

Playing felt impossible.

And somehow, I was still doing it. I don’t know how. Still training. Still playing at the highest level. 

I look back at those periods and …. I honestly don’t really know how I found the strength to get through all that.

I think part of it was a sense of responsibility.

Even when things don’t feel right, you still show up. You still go in. You still do the work.

If you can’t do it for yourself, you do it for the team. For the people around you.

I wouldn’t wish those experiences on anyone. But when you come out the other side of it…. You learn so much about yourself. You realise how strong you are. How resilient. And you realise what matters most to you. 

I don’t like to dwell on it, but it changed me. I feel so much more aware of what’s happening around me now. It’s helped me as a leader. When I’m around the group every day, I can sense when someone’s not quite themselves. When their frequency changes. 

Obviously you don’t always know what it is, and you can’t always fix it. 

But that awareness… Seeing someone in pain and letting them know you see them. It’s a start.

What I understand more than anything now is that none of this happens on your own.

I think when you’re so focused on getting better — on training, on playing, on doing the work properly, writing training plans and notes and reminders — you can spend a lot of your life with your head down. 

It’s just how you get yourself through it. 

You can only think about the next run, the next pass, the next touch.

But at some point you have to look up and see who’s around you. 

When I do that now, what I see most clearly isn’t really a goal or a match or a trophy.

It’s people.

The people you train with and travel with. The people who are there to push you and to celebrate you and who know when you’d rather go straight home after the cinema.

That’s the part of football that maybe gets harder to explain the longer you’re in it. Because it is really unique. To work that closely with people who have your back every single day. 

And doing all that in public, too.

It gives your life a kind of richness that players don’t think about as much as we should. Our lives in football are so fleeting. Maybe we don’t get to appreciate it until it’s too late.

When I think about my closest friends now, so many of them come from football. They know who they are. Different clubs, different years, different versions of my life. But we shared something at that particular time, and that stays with you. It becomes part of the fabric of your life.

I think that’s why, when I do stop playing, whenever that is, I know I’ll be fine. Not because I won’t miss it, or I’ve planned it all perfectly — although I’m sure I’ll try.

It’s because of the opportunities this game has brought me. From Mintlaw to London. Living in Seattle. Melbourne. Seeing women’s football as it was — in stadiums filled with empty seats — to where it is now….

When I arrived in London, just a teenager, carrying my packed lunch, lugging equipment to the pitches to train twice a week…. Did I ever think we’d sell out the Emirates?

But it’s one thing to have those experiences. What makes it so much more special is to get the opportunity to share those experiences with others.

Whole stretches of my life live in those friendships. They are our shared memories now. We’ll never lose that. We’ll be little old ladies one day, sitting in the garden talking about things people could only dream of. 

Even if that’s all I got out of football, that’s a very special thing to come away with.

At 17, I understood the work. The training. The little details.

But I didn’t really understand what it means to have people join you on that journey. Whether that’s those you have the privilege of standing next to on the pitch or those paying to watch you from the stands — supporters of this club or people who’ve supported you your whole life.

I may have taught myself to always plan ahead, to be prepared, to always think about what comes next — but there are still these moments when life catches you standing still.

That’s what I think was really sitting underneath that moment in Sorrento.

Not just the final. Not just the flights. Definitely not the wine. 

It wasn’t even the money, really.

It was just the gesture of it.

My sister — with three kids and her own life and all the pressures and logistics that come with that — had quietly done what she needed to do to be there. 

She hadn’t made a thing of it. She hadn’t asked me for anything. She had gone because she knew what it meant to me. And what it meant to her, too.

That I was not alone.

To football, to Arsenal, and to those closest to me.