Hope Powell

And then my earliest memory then of the women's football was then the 2009 Euros, and that was with the OGs.

That was with, you know, Karen Carney and Kelly Smith, and managed by Hope Powell, and it was just...

I remember in that era seeing football really kind of ignite a nation and bring it all together as well.

And yeah, and I remember everyone just wore the shirts down the street and just remember thinking, gosh, this is such a universal language.

I think it's been really laid down by the, the Lionesses saying that you can now be a professional footballer, but also we do rely on, you know, the degrees and the education that we have as well.

The dual career is something that's really important.

I mentioned that a real memory of mine was watching the 2009 Euros where unfortunately we lost to Germany in the final, but they were managed by Hope Powell, and now Hope Powell is the technical director of the club that I work at and I work with closely.

So that's just absolutely extraordinary and sh- she's a big driver of education.

I never thought necessarily that was something I would do or have the opportunity to do.

So when I got that, especially I was in the youth levels and I was playing in the reserves and all those things, And suddenly you get that call up from Hope Powell, who was the England manager at the time, saying that you're going into the senior environment.

There was that whole like... nervousness of number one, dealing with the head coach of the England national team.

But there was also the kind of like absolute celebration of like, oh, you know, with my family and my friends being like, I can't believe it, like I'm with England.

It was-- I had that kind of steady management when I was at Everton, when I was at Notts County, and when I was at Brighton.

But what I did see after I left Brighton, after my third season there, when, you know, the Hope Powell moved on and you've seen so many different managerial changes within...

You know, maybe they have more time to adapt the players, but still you could see how disruptive it, it was, um, into the flow, and different manager comes in, different ideas, wants to play a different way, and then another manager comes in.

So it-- you know, this was a period where it felt like Brighton were starting to settle.