Angela Banks was another in a long line of Arsenal strikers who just couldn’t stop scoring.
Angie, as she was universally known around the club, scored 132 goals in 141 Arsenal appearances, with 42 of those goals coming in the 2000/01 treble-winning season – including the winner in the FA Cup final against Fulham. Her love affair with football began before she can even remember in the late 1970s.
“My parents tell me that even as a toddler, if my older brother wanted to play catch, I was always putting the ball on the floor and kicking it or running with it,” Banks laughs. “Every break time at school I played football with the boys in the playground, and when I got home I would play at the park.”
Soon enough, people started to sit up and take notice of her ability. “When I was ten, the janitor at my junior school knew me and a friend were always playing football and he told us about a girls’ team in Brighton and suggested we should go along.
“I wasn’t allowed to play for my school team. My PE teacher would tell me he really wanted me to play but the school insurance didn’t cover girls playing football for the school.” Banks took the school janitor’s advice, although she required some help. Angie’s parents are both deaf so a friend’s parents had to make the necessary phone calls to get her onto the team.
“I joined Brighton who, at that time, were called C&C Sports. I had a wonderful coach and it all took off from there,” she recalls. Banks’ remarkable journey then took her away from England at a young age.
“When I was 16 and I was playing for Brighton, a team called Surahammar from Sweden came over for an early summer camp. I think I scored four goals against them,” Angie says. The Swedish season ran on a different calendar compared to the English calendar, which remains the case today.
“I knew two of my teammates were going to go over and play for them for the summer on a three-month visa. They needed a striker for the second half of the season and asked our coach if I would come over and play for them,” When Banks’ coach Julie Hemsley put the proposal to her, she didn’t expect Angie to accept.
“Initially my parents said no, but I really wanted to go over and play,” Banks says. “It was going to be after my GCSEs; two of my friends were going too. Eventually my parents let me go because I kicked up such a stink.”
"In England I was seen as weird and strange for playing football but in Sweden it was completely normal"
It was a big move for a 16-year-old to make, but Angie says it was the making of her and that she found acceptance in Sweden that had eluded her in England. “Initially, I was homesick and thought I’d made a mistake, but we were hosted by some of the Surahammar players’ families, we got jobs selling lottery tickets in the town, so we got to know people, and it was such a lovely place.
“I had struggled where I grew up with being bullied and I didn’t feel like I fitted in. I escaped my troubles in Sweden. I ended up going back the next couple of summers, and when I turned 18 I met a guy there, got engaged and ended up staying until I was 22.”
Angie says the culture around women’s football in Sweden gave her a sense of belonging. “Swedish women’s football was way beyond England at that point. Surahammar’s women’s team had primacy on their training ground and training hours because they were in a higher division than the men’s team.
“It was a different world. In England I was seen as weird and strange for playing football but in Sweden it was completely normal for girls to play. It was a place I wanted to be.”
Banks even learned the language, adding Swedish to her command of British Sign Language. But after six years she felt it was time to come home and to be with her family again.
“My grandparents were getting older, they had retired and my grandad became poorly. I finished with my boyfriend in Sweden – it had run its course – and the football was getting better in England.
“With my parents being deaf I couldn’t call them on the phone, and there was no FaceTime back then; I was writing letters and postcards. I loved Sweden but I just needed to be nearer to my family.”
Banks went back to the south coast but elected not to rejoin Brighton. “A lot of my friends who I played with at Brighton had moved to Whitehawk, and I wasn’t career-minded; I just wanted to play with my friends, so I joined Whitehawk.”
It was there that she came to the attention of Arsenal manager Vic Akers in the spring of 1999. “We were in the second tier but we had a very good team. We got to the semi-finals of the League Cup and played Arsenal, and I scored a goal.
“Kelly Simmons from the FA came to watch that game on behalf of [then England coach] Hope Powell and I got picked for England off the back of it too. Vic later told me he waited to see whether Whitehawk would get promoted that season. We didn’t, but he said if we had he probably wouldn’t have asked me if I wanted to come to Arsenal. That summer I trained with Croydon a few times too, but as soon as I trained with Arsenal and met the team I knew it was the place for me.”
Banks’ career was well decorated with trophies and goalscoring records, but her journey was also that search for belonging – and she found it with Arsenal. Like many players at the club at that time, when the team only trained twice a week, the club found Banks a job in the club’s Development Office. She says this slightly impacted her love of playing.
“About a year and a half, two years in, I started working in the office. I was commuting to training from Brighton and I think Arsenal realised if I was in London more it would be easier. “I worked in the development office with Clare Wheatley and Ciara Grant. But working there challenged my love for it a little.
“I was seeing less of my family, which was the point in me coming back from Sweden. To be honest, I think I would have preferred washing pants in the laundry like some of the other players. I think the issue was that I’m not an office girl.”
On the pitch, Banks’ enjoyment – and her form – were unimpeachable. “It was the best team I ever played in,” she says. “We played good football and it was fun. I look back now and think about what that team could have been like in an era of full professionalism where everyone trains together every day instead of twice a week.”
In the early 2000s, Arsenal’s domestic dominance was briefly usurped by Fulham, who took the step of becoming the first fully professional women’s team in England. They recruited a number of international players, including Rachel Yankey, Marieanne Spacey and Katie Chapman from Arsenal. Banks says she was approached by Fulham too.
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“A lot of players started to go to Fulham; I was approached by them after I scored the winner against them in the 2001 FA Cup final. I felt they were doing it just to take me away from Arsenal and make them less of a threat.
“They had big players in the striker position and I think I would have just been on the bench. I didn’t see it as the right thing for me. I had a meeting with Vic and David Dein and decided to stay - and I don’t regret it at all.”
That 2001 FA Cup final against Fulham has passed into Arsenal folklore. Fulham were a third-tier team but, with the talent and resources they possessed, everyone knew they would be promoted to the top flight at the earliest opportunity. Arsenal, despite having won the league title and the League Cup already, went into the game as underdogs.
“We knew we were underdogs; we knew Fulham were going to get promoted to the top-flight. They had internationals in every position, and they were full-time,” Angie remembers. However, Arsenal pulled off a tense 1-0 victory and Banks scored a late winner at Selhurst Park.
“It was the only time I won the FA Cup at Arsenal so it was very special to me. We scored near the end and we were threatening right till the end. I don’t think Fulham’s fitness was superior to ours even though they were training every day.”
The game is also remembered for a late penalty save from 21-year-old Emma Byrne, who announced herself as a club legend in waiting. “Had Emma not saved that penalty most people would tell you Fulham would probably have gone on to win. It was a turning point. That really won us the game.”
Banks’ England career was slightly more frustrating. “I had a fear of flying, which affected me and made the travel difficult,” Angie recalls. “It was a different set-up and I didn’t feel Hope Powell got the best out of me, whereas I got that with Vic at Arsenal.
“I think Hope wanted a stronger, bigger striker and I was slight, more of a Michael Owen off the shoulder type. The flying was very stressful and I didn’t feel like I was succeeding so I told Hope that I couldn’t do it anymore. I just wanted to play for Arsenal and Vic was very supportive.”
Banks opted to retire altogether in 2003 when she was just 28. “I was coming towards my thirties and I wanted to settle down and have a family. I’d won everything with Arsenal except the Champions League. I felt there were teams in Europe that were way beyond us and I didn’t think we had a chance of winning it... I was very wrong about that!
“Over the years I’ve come to regret not sticking around another couple of years to be part of that! I got to a stage though where there were young players on the bench like Alex Scott, Lianne Sanderson and Ellen Maggs desperate to get on the pitch. I felt I needed a change and to have a family I thought I needed to step away from football.”
However, Banks did drift back into the game briefly. “I went back to Whitehawk because I thought it would be a nice social thing, but boy was I wrong! I was getting kicked all over the place.” She then rejoined the Gunners for 2004/2005.
“Vic kept calling me to see if I’d come back, so after a year I thought, ‘If I’m going to go through this I might as well go back to Arsenal.’” Arsenal won the league title and the League Cup, but Banks felt her decision to retire in the first place had been vindicated.
“I played for a year but my fitness had dropped off and Julie Fleeting had arrived. It was a wonderful season but Arsenal didn’t really need me anymore.”
Now a mother of three, Banks still coaches today. She helped fire us to three league titles, three League Cups and an FA Cup across five seasons. But just as much as that, at Arsenal she found a place where she belonged.
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