Kelly Somers: Leah, nice to see you – thank you for your time. Let’s start with football. I want to know the first time you played football, your first memories and also – because of something you’ve just said to me off camera – how good were you?
Leah Williamson: The first time I ever played football, my memory was at gymnastics. I must have been five or six. We were just waiting for our parents at the end to pick us up and the coach was a football fan, so we just got out a soft ball. My first proper memory is playing for my local team, but my mum says it was painful.
Kelly: Because you weren’t very good?!
Leah: Yeah. She’s like: ‘You go and support your kids, but at the same time, it wasn’t thrilling to watch. It’s not like I was holding out that you were going to be a footballer.’
Kelly: When you were little, though, it probably wasn’t something that she would have envisaged for her daughter anyway, was it?
Leah: No, definitely not. Especially because she couldn’t have played football – she had to pretend to be a boy, so she’s thinking, ‘all right, we’ll just see how far this goes’. I used to toe-punt it. I couldn’t kick the ball properly until I was 10 or something.
Kelly: That gives every parent of young children hope, listening to that!
Leah: Yeah, there’s no stress.
Kelly: What was the name of your first team? What can you remember of it?
Leah: Scots Youth FC. I was the only girl, but I was very well protected within my team. Still… with other teams, it wasn’t great.
Kelly: They targeted you, do you think, because you were the girl?
Leah: It was more parents… like: ‘Don’t let her do that to you, she’s a girl.’
Kelly: I wonder what they’re saying now. Those parents are probably like: ‘I remember her.’
Leah: If I saw them, they’d probably be like: ‘Oh, we used to play together.’ I’d be like: ‘No, you used to give me a hard time.’
Kelly: Was there a point where you thought, ‘OK, I could make this. This is actually something that could be a career’? I imagine – going back to being a girl as well – it probably isn’t something that’s thought about quite as much…
Leah: I had a conversation with my mum when I was about 15 and I said: ‘I’m probably going to stop now.’ She was like: ‘All right, you tell them then.’ I was too scared…
Kelly: Did you actually, genuinely think…
Leah: Yeah, we had a conversation out there in the car park and I was just like: ‘I’m tired, you’re tired, we’re travelling a lot, it costs a lot of money and I’m not sure… it’s a bit of a gamble, it’s not professional.’
My dad always said I’d be able to earn a wage one day. I don’t know where he had that idea from, but he was very much like, ‘keep going, follow your dreams’ kind of thing, whereas I was a bit more pragmatic, I’d say. I’m a bit of a worrier and, also, I wasn’t the loudest footballer, I wouldn’t say. A couple of my team-mates would get chats from the first team and that wasn’t really coming my way, so I was just being a bit realistic, like: ‘Maybe it’s not for me.’ But I stuck it out.
Kelly: It’s a good job you did really, isn’t it?
Leah: I’m happy I did. But, yeah, I’d say once I got into the first team, I was still a bit like, ‘all right, let’s see what happens’ and then I decided I didn’t want to go to university. I think that’s then why I fully committed. Then on my 18th birthday, I signed my professional contract. The other option for a lot of us was going to America and going to get a scholarship.
Kelly: Did you consider that?
Leah: Yeah – like Bend It Like Beckham… I’m watching that as a kid and thinking, ‘yeah, I want to do that’. So, that was a consideration and then the game here just picked up, picked up, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to leave this – this is too exciting to not be a part of for me’.
Kelly: Has there been a turning point? Like a moment where – other than that conversation you had with your mum – if it hadn’t happened, maybe all of the success wouldn’t have followed?
Leah: The 2015 World Cup. Like, the prep camps – you’d normally bring in a bigger squad and you’d have these reserve players playing with you. I’d been playing for Arsenal and I’d done a season… so I’d turned a few heads, let’s say.
Kelly: People knew who you were?
Leah: Yeah – and I got a call from the manager. It was Mark Sampson at the time. I’d just got injured, but he called me to say: ‘I was going to bring you into the prep camp, but don’t worry about your injury – hopefully there will be a next time.’ It didn’t happen for me then. I came back and it happened again. I’m not sure if I’d just missed my opportunity. I think that moment in my head… then I realised how much I cared about it. Instead of just letting things happen to me, I was like: ‘No, I’m going to try.’ And then the England call-up came and I think that was when I was like: ‘This is like a career thing now.’