Not 2Shy 2Play
Like every young impressionable girl, Shura had big dreams. When she was in Primary School she was set a task to write a letter about ‘What you want to be when you’re older’. But unlike other girls her age, she scrawled down in pencil ‘I want to be a footballer, an artist and someone that works in space’. And she soon set herself to work on achieving something that almost seemed impossible.
Starting with trying to solve England’s problem on the left wing during the 1990s by becoming a left winger and tirelessly practicing only with her left foot, as she dreamed of one day playing for the men’s Three Lions.
Music artist Shura, also known as Alexandra Denton, is well known for her song ‘What’s it Gonna Be’ appearing on the soundtrack of Heartstopper, but unknown to some she also played for Manchester City between the ages of 8 and 15 years old – before, like many young girls that age, giving up because it wasn’t seen as a viable career.
Her dad had a real dislike for the culture around men’s football and he even went to some great effort to encourage any hobby that wasn't sport for Shura’s two brothers.
After her parents separated when she was three-years old, her dad had a girlfriend called Ingrid, who was a huge West Ham fan and suddenly her interest in football was born which led to a spell with the Blues which she looks back fondly on to this day.
“That's when I first became aware of football and I think it was through her love of football that I got into it and I can't really explain why,” she said
“I'm guessing that’s why, that she was really into football, she was very passionate about it and it seemed really exciting.
“I remember watching England, the men's team in Euro 96 and they had this real problem on the left wing where they just didn't really have a great left winger and I was right footed at the time and I said ‘OK, I'm going to solve this problem. I'm going to learn to play with my left foot’ and I went into the back garden and I just started taking penalties only with my left foot for like weeks and weeks.
“I was like, ‘I'm going to be so good with my left foot that I'm going to play for England men's team.’ I just thought if I was good enough, I would be there and I’m going to go and play for England,” she added.
“So, I'd completely become obsessed with the idea of becoming a footballer and playing for the England team and I guess because I just didn't see an England women's team. I didn't know that women played football.”
The best part of it all was that her dad, initially sceptical of football, proved to be incredibly supportive of her decision and took her to every single training session and every game.
“He'd been like ‘I spent so much effort into dissuading my sons from playing’ that he kind of found it funny because he was like ‘Of course, I didn't think about this but I should have done.’
“So, I taught him to fall in love with football,” she smiled.
“So that's a beautiful journey that we've been on together as he went from hating something and thinking it was awful to actually understanding and loving it.”
And that journey continued as Shura took part in a mixed tournament at primary school, which was how she was scouted to play for City.
“I think I was subbed on because it was late on in the tournament, but all I remember is scoring this goal that involved dribbling around four or five different people and I just remember putting it in the back and running and suddenly everything was in slow motion and blurred and I was just screaming.
“As we were leaving the leisure centre these two women, Jane Morley and Lesley Wright, came up to me and my dad and said to me ‘How would you like to play football?’ and ‘Would you like to come and do a training session with Manchester City?’ And my dad said I've never said yes quicker to anything in in my life.”
She attended the first training session at a park in Manchester and was then asked to come back and eventually Shura did fulfil her dream of playing on the left, just not for England.
“I was an attacking wing back, so I did end up playing on the left. Like midfield left wing when it was kind of seven a-side, I guess and then as we got to Elevens, I fell back to left back position because my specialty was slide tackles.
“I literally had the meanest slide tackle, which I realise is quite funny to say, because a lot of people say if you're having to do a slide tackle, it means you've already made a mistake.
“But I just loved it. It was the most fun thing to do because the right winger would be running down with the ball and I'd just be like ‘you think you're going to cross it in or you think you're going to cut inside and shoot. And I have other plans for you, my friend.’”
The singer made some of the best memories of her childhood while at City in an unstoppable team of young girls.
“We were great, it was almost embarrassing. We would win like 7-0, I scored five goals in the game once and I'm a defender,” she stated.
“I got a ball that was signed by Joe Royle, who was manager at the time and all of the City players being like ‘well done on the five goals’. It was just a great team and everyone who was involved like Lizzie’s [the captain] mom who did the kit. There was no kit person. It was just parents.”
Although Shura has some fantastic memories of everyone associated with City – like trainer Godfrey - nothing quite compared to the culinary delights of a half-time orange.
“Still to this day I will never have an experience as satisfying as an orange slice at half time because it's not about the orange, it's the context in which the orange is being eaten and then like putting it in your mouth and having it as a little gum shield. I have some really fond memories.”
It’s no secret that to make it to the top level of any sport the support from friends and family is so important and it was a message that Shura was keen to play up as she talked about her time with the Blues.
“It’s so many sacrifices, so many weekends. Not sacrifices that they're willing to make. Sacrifices they want to make. It's not just one person being good at football getting there, it's everyone around them, it's their grassroots club, it's their family," she says.
“It takes hundreds of people and I think it's the community part of it that I have such fond memories of and actually that I really miss. I just think there's something about team sports and it's really special.”
And despite her dad’s attempts to stop her brothers from getting involved in any sport, he became the most supportive towards Shura’s passion for football and they made some really special memories together.
“Post Friday training, we’d go to the drive thru and get a burger, those are memories I'll have with me for the rest of my life. There’ll be some of the fondest memories of my childhood without a doubt. The best memories from my childhood involve football. Like it’s not even close.”
It’s no secret of how misunderstood women’s football still was during this time. In 1971 the ban on women’s football had only just been lifted after 50 years of them being forbidden from playing football and opinions still hadn’t fully shifted.
“Me and Viv Bowdler, we were the two girls that played in my primary school and we were both good, but people thought we were weird.
“I remember going to little camps in the summer and we'd be the only girls there. Back then you were playing in environments that weren’t really set up for you. It was a different era.”
She may have loved football but her passion for the sport had to be put on hold when she discovered the guitar and a passion and talent for music.
“I think another aspect was being a teenager and discovering music and falling in love with music, which was my second big love," she smiles.
“It took a lot of my attention and I'd started to play guitar and I'd started to write songs and I'd started to play gigs.
“Unfortunately, at that time, these two things couldn't coincide, there wasn't enough support on both sides.”
After music took full hold of her life, Shura did eventually return to football as an antidote to panic attacks she’d started to experience as music really took hold of her life.
“The first song I put out was a song called Touch, then I was suddenly on this kind of music treadmill running 100 miles an hour with very little preparation mentally for what that would entail.
“Whilst I was recording the first album anything other than music went completely out the window and I started to have my first ever panic attacks.
“It wasn't until the third or fourth panic attack that I even knew that that's what it was. Because the first time you have a panic attack you think you're dying and you go to the hospital.”
It was then that she realised just how much joy and comfort football had brought her and how much it connected her to her childhood and after a lot of research she stumbled across Goal Diggers FC.
After initially signing up to their amateurs training programme she quickly realised that her footballing ability had never left her.
“My first session I was in they were like ‘I don't think you should be in this part’ but I decided ‘I'm going to stay here until I'm a bit more confident.
“And I stayed for a while just because I really lacked that confidence and looking back, I feel sorry for everyone else and I was probably like ‘I feel like Messi!!!’”
Like everyone across the nation, Shura tuned into the Women’s Euros in Switzerland this summer as City’s very own Alex Greenwood, Jess Park, Lauren Hemp and Khiara Keating helped England to retain their title.
And she confessed after not being able to watch the Sweden or Italy game fully due to nerves, she has now adopted a new superstition.
“I never want to do it like that again,” she laughed.
“It was the best thing and the worst, we did it the hard way. I couldn’t watch it. So I text my friends ‘I'm going to have a bath and I'm going to put my phone upside down and when I'm out of the bath we'll have either survived or we won't’ and when I found out we made it through I sent them a video of me in my bath towel screaming.”
But it didn’t end there as the new lucky superstition struck again against Spain in the final.
“We got to penalties and I had to watch them with my back turned to the TV so I'd like to listen to them, but I wouldn't watch them.
“But my partner went for a shower and she was like ‘I can't handle it’ and we won. So, I'm like, OK, the new rule is when it's tight either me or my partner has to have a bath or a shower.”
Finally, she discussed the evolution of the game and the level of inclusivity in women’s football.
“I think the culture in the women's game is magic, like the fan culture, and there's something really special there that I think the culture in the men's game could learn from.
“Watching the women play it feels like a place where people who are fans of football absolutely can go and watch great football, but also it's where you can bring families. I really don't want to say it's just for families and just for kids because it's not, these players are incredible.
“And the way the game has come on since I was a player and even in the last 15 years,10 years it just shows you that if you invest in the players, if you invest in the league, if you invest in grassroots, the great football is there.”
Interview: Alice Wright