She's Arsenal through and through, but she never stops learning.
**What do you remember from your very early days being coached? What were the most valuable lessons you learned?**
When I was really young, it was all about having fun. At my first club, Scot Youth Boys, I had a really good coach who made the football competitive. Everybody wanted to win, and it was about scoring goals but it was also about being a good teammate and passing the ball and not trying to do everything yourself, which I appreciated. These values that I've lived by.
I joined Rushden and Diamonds Girls a year later and that was a bit more tactical, with a bit more information to take. I was a six-year-old in under-10s and I was trying to listen but I wasn't much use on the ball! They saw something in me, though. We had a good group of players and competed in tournaments, but at that stage, it was still mostly about enjoying yourself and learning the game.
I understand why they were setting these foundations early doors. I think there are things you need as a footballer as you get older that, if you're not taught at a young age, you then struggle in a different environment. For me, it’s teamwork. That's your bread and butter.
**Who were your early influences? What players did you look up to when you started and why?**
Rachel Yankey and Kelly Smith - my family put them in front of my face at an early age. My dad took me to the 2005 Euros when we hosted the tournament and I saw Kaz Carney score the last-minute winner in Manchester. At the time, I just thought it was a cool thing to see. I never sat there and thought: “Oh my god, I'm going to be a footballer one day.” I just thought this is really fun to be involved in.
The way that Arsenal played back then, they utterly dominated the competition. When you’re a kid, of course you can be quite fickle, so I’m just lucky that they were the very best. I just loved watching them play.
I was a forward when I was younger, but that switch to centre-back was always a practical one. I think having learnt what I'd learnt from an early age, I always just saw it as: the team need me to do this, so I'm going to do this. That is how my brain works anyway – when people give me direct tasks. There’s also the small matter that I wouldn't have got into the first team at Arsenal otherwise. They needed a centre-back and there I was. Somebody had seen me play centre-back at England, so then my opportunity came.
**Can you pinpoint a stage in your career, or an age group, where you made the biggest leap?**
I'd say I was about 15, because that's also when I nearly quit. I thought, there's no point carrying on if I'm not going to try and become something. School was really important to me and I had other interests, so it wasn’t an easy decision. You hear rumblings of the first team and once I’d trained with them and saw them every day, I realised that this job was a possibility. My dad had always said that one day, this would be a living and now I could see that myself.
Ultimately, it came down to my mum telling me: “You can quit if you want, but you have to tell them” and I was too scared! Then came the realisation that I didn’t have anything in my life that I enjoyed as much as football. If I'd had something else that really inspired me, that decision would have been harder.
**What managers have you worked with, and how do they differ?**
I think when a manager has a clear ideology of how they want to play, combine that with being at Arsenal and that being an ideology in itself, I respond to that because it's task-focused. It just suits me to know: this is what we're trying to achieve and understand how that happens and what is required to make that happen. Then, it's up to me to bring my best to the situation with anything extra that I have to add. When coaches give you the freedom and space to bring your strengths to the collective, that’s massive. That’s ultimately how we change the team.
**What else did you learn at school that helped in your career?**
Discipline. I didn’t hate studying growing up, so I think when it came to learning and examining the game, that mindset helped me.
**What do you wish you had known earlier in your career?**
When I was younger, I wasn't the kid who went out and played more. At academy level, we didn't train as much as, say, my boy equivalent would have and even at 17, I was only training three times a week. Then you try and switch on to become a professional footballer, and my body couldn't take it.
I’d be a lot more skilful now if I’d had more training. It’s why I always comment on our youth players coming through, because I'm like, they should be better than me! They should be ten times the player that I am because of the support that they now have and the system that feeds them into the game. That’s how the game grows. I think preparation for the physical aspects of football will be important for them as well.
When it came to nutrition, my mum would tell me to drink loads of water, but then you get older and realise it's not quite enough to just drink water. Now we have access to people with real expertise and excellence in that area, but we didn't when we were younger. You don't ever like to compare to the men's side, but you have a blueprint there of what it means to be a professional athlete, so we've looked at that and tried to incorporate. I'd say that's one of the things I'm most proud of at Arsenal: being part of that change and making sure that if you come to be a player here, you have the support that you need.
**Would you like to become a coach in the future?**
Absolutely not! I'm more task-oriented, so it’s like: Tell me what you want and maybe I'll have something to add that might be of interest to somebody. Whereas I think a lot of work that has to go into being a coach and creating your own ideology, I'm not sure I'm capable of that. A couple of times in my career, I've thought about it and a few people have said that I wouldn't make a bad coach, but I really like the individual work like Kelly \[Smith\]’s role here. Really honing in on making certain people better at their super strengths. I think I could do something like that but I'm not sure being a coach is for me. There'll always be work to do in football and I'd love to help in any way that I can.
I think coaching can differ from captaincy because it depends on what your leadership style is. Some people lead by instruction, some people lead by action. I think one of my strengths as a captain is the man-management side of things and knowing how to get the best out of people.
**Who in the current squad would make the best manager in future and why?**
Girls like Beth, Wally, Kim - they're doing their UEFA A Licence and I can imagine them all being coaches. I think, in terms of the way that the game is played, I love the way that Mariona sees football, so I think she would be a good coach. You always have certain people who, whenever they speak, you agree with them. I’m not sure there's been a time when I’ve disagreed with anything she’s said about football.
When it comes to thinking about teammates as future coaches, it's not really about how they play on the pitch now, because we're all making decisions and it's a completely different environment. It’s when you've stopped and you're talking about it, that's where the wisdom is.
**What can football learn from other sports?**
I think the hardest thing in football is finding that balance of individual focus versus team focus. For example, you see a lot of kids come through and you think they're going to be a real player and then you never hear of them again. It's the management of the human within a team environment and making sure that the human is the priority. And in team sport, it's not just football, that's just not what happens a lot of the time. When the higher powers decide that we could just keep playing more and more games, it's so difficult.
If you take boxing as an example, they only fight when they’re ready because there’s such an emphasis on health. For us as footballers, that’s not really an option. Women's football doesn't have the same depth as men's to have 30-player squads across the board. But it’s so hard to find that balance between the individual and the collective because when you focus on one thing, another suffers. That's why I wouldn't want to be a coach.