I suppose it should make me feel a bit jealous. I mean, is there a boy anywhere who loves football who hasn’t dreamt about playing for England? Even if it’s never going to happen? Well, it was never going to happen to me. But Katy? It’s there in black and white, the headline at the top of the story in the local paper:
LEESIDE GIRL GETS ENGLAND CALL-UP!
Kate Jackson, just 16 years old and from the Northwick Estate in Shelby, has been called into the England Women’s squad for the upcoming international friendly against France at Leicester City’s King Power Stadium in two weeks’ time.
That’s Kate Jackson. Sister of Alan Jackson. Sister of me. How could I not be jealous of her? She’ll be running out in the white shirt, the Three Lions on her chest, in front of thousands of people and the TV cameras. I’ll be there. So will Mum and Dad. So will half of Shelby, I’ll bet. They’ll be proud of her and I will be too.
Now this is supposed to be my little sister I’m talking about. Except she’s not so little, actually. She never has been. Even when I was ten or eleven, Katy – eighteen months younger – was already as tall as I was. And she’s not stopped growing since. Only sixteen and skinny as a rake but she’s nearly six feet tall.
So, when we were growing up, nobody ever thought of her as my “little” sister. She was as tall as us boys and she was better than most of us at football. Not that we ever said that to her. But you could tell we all knew, when it came to picking sides in the school playground or over in the park. Whoever was captain would always make sure they picked Katy first.
Katy just always wanted to play. I can remember her volunteering to go in goal for me in the back garden when she was only four or five. And she was keen: when I put the ball through one of the kitchen windows, she told Mum she’d done it. I’d promised her that I’d go in goal for a bit if she did, and Katy would do anything to be the one taking shots for a change.
So when Dad started a team on the estate for me and my mates, of course Katy wanted to be involved. All the boys were a couple of years older than her, but she’d come along to our games with her best friend, Jackie, who loved football too. The pair of them would run up and down the touchline, cheering us on. They’d sprint off across the pitches to get the ball when it went out of play. It was a bit embarrassing: your sister shouting out what you should be doing in the middle of games.
Sometimes Dad would give Katy and Jackie one of our spare balls, and they’d find a few kids around the park to start a game of their own with: two-a-side, five-a-side against whoever they could find, stray dogs included. And every Tuesday they came along to our training sessions. They’d join in, do everything we did, and then give us the runaround when Dad finished up with a small-sided match. Jackie was smaller and quicker but Katy could do the lot. When she tackled you, you stayed tackled. Midfield or up front, she could play anywhere: chasing back, clearing the ball off the line and then running up the other end to score.
Us boys were always pretending we were superstars off the telly, playing for Shelby Town or Man United or Chelsea. Katy was different: she never pretended to be anybody and she was always serious about winning. It never made sense to me that she couldn’t play in our team once we all turned eleven. She was as good as us. Why did the rules say she couldn’t play with the boys?
I know Dad felt bad about that too. I still remember him talking to her after training one night, explaining that we were too old now and that she wouldn’t be able to play with us any more. Katy was upset about it but I think Dad was even more upset. It ended up with Katy putting her arm around his shoulder and telling him he shouldn’t worry, that everything would be OK.
Funnily enough, it was Mum who came to the rescue. We were having our tea a couple of nights later and she pulled out this leaflet from the leisure centre that was advertising girls’ football sessions. I don’t think Katy had ever really thought about there being “girls’” football. She just played; she wasn’t too sure about the “girls’” bit. But as soon as Jackie said she was up for it, Katy agreed.
Well, I don’t want to sound too dramatic. But it was pretty dramatic. You could say that night at the leisure centre changed Katy’s life. The coach who was taking the session, John Pullman, was involved with the ladies’ team at Shelby Town, which had only just started up. They’d set up a reserve team as well – a “development squad”, John called it. He only needed one look. Straight after that first session at the leisure centre, he was asking Katy and Jackie if they wanted to come along for trials.
Of course Shelby Town wanted to take Katy and Jackie on. Even though they were younger than everyone else at the club. The reserves were really a youth team. All the other girls were still at school too, and came from all over Leeside. Almost overnight, everything seemed to change for Katy. Dad’s not a bad coach, but John had done all his badges and everything: Katy was learning something new every training session. And she was playing for a proper team, in proper games, even if they were friendlies.
Us boys kept playing too. Dad put us into the local youth league and everything, but to be honest we were just messing about. Football was something we did for fun at the weekend. But for Katy it all started getting serious as soon as she joined Shelby Town. She was always the first at training. John made her captain of the team. I think, even back then, Katy was seeing that now she’d discovered girls’ football, she could really do something in the game.
The rest of us never really imagined what that “something” might be. The months rolled by. I suppose we just took it for granted: playing for Shelby Town reserves was just Katy’s thing and we let her get on with it. Mum or Dad would take her along to training and to games at the weekend, but we didn’t have any proper idea of what might happen. I mean, nobody took girls’ football that seriously, did they?
But then, one Sunday afternoon, they had an open day at Shelby Town and a game between the women’s first team and the women’s reserves was part of the show. We all went down to watch. There were probably a few hundred other people there too. Normally they might not have watched women’s football, but the match was on the pitch at Manor Park so they hung around. The manager of Shelby Town ladies’ team was there – Denise Rogers. So was the Town manager, Mick Diamond.
Even though Katy and Jackie and their teammates were much younger and less experienced, they played pretty well. Katy scored an amazing goal from the edge of the box, a curler into the top corner, and I remember thinking, Blimey! Is that my sister? Just as the game finished, this old bloke – quite posh – came up to Mum and Dad. He introduced himself: “Ernest Carstairs, Chairman of Shelby Town.” They were chatting about the game and then Dad pointed Katy out. Do you know what Mr Carstairs said? “That girl will play for England one day.” And do you know what me and Mum and Dad did? We just laughed.
We weren’t laughing a couple of nights later, though, when Denise Rogers turned up at our house. Mum and Dad had been expecting her but I don’t think Katy knew she was coming. When the doorbell rang, she and Jackie were upstairs on the PS3 playing FIFA. A couple of minutes later, everybody was sitting around the kitchen table. Except me: I had to make the tea and get the biscuits out. And then stand in the corner, listening to every word.
Denise Rogers came straight out with it. Even though Katy and Jackie were still youngsters, she wanted to get them involved with the ladies’ first team. It would mean extra training and playing against women instead of other girls. But she thought they were ready for it. I looked at Katy and I knew exactly what she was thinking: she was biting her lip to stop herself shouting out “YES!” straight away. Mrs Rogers said not to rush, that Katy and Jackie should have a chat about what they wanted to do.
The girls disappeared up to Katy’s room as soon as Mrs Rogers had gone, and Mum and Dad left them to it. About an hour later, we heard the front door shut and Katy came into the sitting room. We all turned round, expecting to see her with a big grin on her face, but instead she was as white as a sheet. She sat down and stared at the telly. Mum and Dad looked at each other, not knowing what to say, so it was up to me to ask what was wrong.
Well, it turned out that Katy was desperate to join the Shelby first team but that Jackie wasn’t. This was her best mate, the mate she’d always played football with. But Jackie wanted to stay with the reserves, with girls more her own age. She was having fun as things were and didn’t want to spoil it by moving up to the first team. I thought maybe that would make Katy have second thoughts. But she didn’t have any. She’d just told Jackie that she was going to move on and join the first team anyway, even if it meant leaving her best friend behind.
Well, from then on, Katy was still Katy – she was still my “little” sister – but everything else seemed completely different. Instead of playing football with girls and against girls, Katy’s world was all about adults all of a sudden. She was only fifteen but the women she was playing with had husbands and children and jobs. They had grown-up lives. They were tough, experienced players and, at first, we weren’t sure whether Katy would cope.
Of course she was good enough. Mrs Rogers knew that; otherwise she wouldn’t have asked Katy to make the step up to the first team. And Katy could handle herself, too. Having played so much football against boys had made sure of that. But she’d never had pressure on her before: a game every week, wearing the Shelby Town shirt, reports in the local paper and the Town programme, a battle against relegation to stay in the league. She started having anxiety attacks before games and getting all dizzy during them, feeling as if she was going to pass out.
Dad talked to her. Mum talked to her. Mrs Rogers talked to her. I didn’t talk to her: I just told her she should go to the doctor’s. And, for once, Katy listened to me instead of anyone else. Everybody thought it was the pressure of playing grown-up football. But the doc did some tests and it turned out that Katy wasn’t struggling with nerves; she was struggling with growing up. Sixteen and over six feet tall was a bit too much, too quick, for her body to deal with. The doctor said not to worry about it: Katy had to try to get some more sleep. And to eat extra chips.
After that, she still felt wobbly before games; even during them. But now she knew what was going on, she was able to control it a bit, and she wasn’t scared of it any more. Actually, Katy wasn’t scared of anything. Which is probably why Mrs Rogers started playing her in defence. Playing with us and with the Shelby reserves, Katy had always been the star centre forward or the one running games from midfield. But now she was playing centre half: winning headers and smashing into strikers for ninety minutes at a time.
She loved it. Loved the whole thing. Even though she didn’t have that much in common with the older women in the team, they looked after her a bit. Not out on the pitch, where Katy could look after herself, thanks very much, but in the dressing room before and after games. They made a fuss of her when she made mistakes and took the mickey out of her whenever she thought she was playing well. They weren’t like Jackie had been: they weren’t her mates. But she trusted them. And, when it came to defending, they trusted her.
I don’t really know if Katy had a plan for football or whether it was football that had a plan for her. In what seemed like just a couple of years, she’d gone from thinking that she might have lost her chance to play football to being involved in a proper team at Shelby Town. Now Katy’s one of the first names on the team sheet, and this season that’s meant being part of a Shelby Town side pushing for promotion to the Women’s Premier League.
And, as if all that wasn’t enough, when the draw was made for the Women’s FA Cup, Shelby Town’s name came out of the hat just before Arsenal’s: home to the Cup holders, the Premier League champions. Katy was beside herself. I couldn’t get much sense out of her, except her telling me that it meant she’d be marking Kelly Smith. I’m not exactly an expert on women’s football, so Katy had to take a deep breath and explain to me that playing against Kelly Smith was like playing against Wayne Rooney or Robin van Persie.
If ever Katy was going to feel wobbly before a game, I thought it would be before the game against Arsenal. But she was fine. Only sixteen, but playing against the best team in the country and marking the England centre forward wasn’t going to be a problem at all. And it wasn’t, either. Town got beaten 3–1 but Kelly Smith didn’t score and Katy did, with a header from a corner. You’ve never seen celebrations like it, on or off the pitch. Me and Mum and Dad were dancing a little jig together when the Town chairman, Mr Carstairs, appeared out of nowhere with a big grin on his face, waggling a finger in the air as if to say, I told you so!
Afterwards, Katy was the only person who wasn’t celebrating. She couldn’t understand people being happy when Town had lost, however well their centre half had played. But I could tell, deep down, she knew she’d done OK. When her big test had come, she’d passed with flying colours. People were gossiping straight after the game, saying that Arsenal would be coming in to try and sign Katy for next season. Well, that didn’t happen. Not straight away, anyway. But what did happen was even better.
A letter dropped onto the doormat at the end of the week. It was half-term so we were all at home. When the letterbox clattered, Katy came rushing downstairs, picked up the envelope addressed to her and sprinted back up to her room. What was going on? I stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening: silence for about a minute and then a thump, followed by a little scream. I went up and burst into Katy’s room. There was my sister, lying on the floor – the “thump” had been her falling off her bed – and waving the letter in the air.
I asked what the matter was and Katy just made a squeaking noise. So I grabbed the letter and had a look for myself. The Football Association logo was at the top of it and the signature at the bottom was Hope Powell, who, Katy explained to me, was the manager of the England women’s national team. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor next to my sister and squeaking as well. Who’d have believed it? Kate Jackson, international footballer!
So we’re all off up the M1 to Leicester tomorrow night. Katy’s been on the phone saying how fantastic the training has been. And telling us not to get our hopes up: the manager’s told her she’ll be on the bench and will just get a little run-out if the game’s going well. But who cares? Even if it’s just a minute at the end, we’ll all be there to see it: my sister playing for England.
Jealous? Me? Well, maybe a bit. But, most of all, I’m just proud. Come on, Katy Jackson! Come on, England! That’s my little sister out there, you know.
