Kelly Smith - Kelly Smith: My Story

Kelly Smith is the greatest womens footballer that this country has ever produced. Yet for a shy girl from Watford, it has been a long and difficult journey to the pinnacle of the world game, and one which involved the hardest of challenges.

Lonely, thousands of miles from home at college in the United States, a series of career-threatening injuries led to severe depression and a battle with alcoholism. But with her typical fighting spirit, Kelly bounced back to inspire Arsenal to countless trophies and to write her name in the history books as Englands record goalscorer.

Footballer: My Story is the inspirational tale of a superstar in a sport enjoyed by millions yet seldom granted the recognition it deserves. From humble beginnings to meeting the Queen and representing Great Britain in the Olympics in front of a record crowd at Wembley, it is the story of how dreams really can come true.

Contents

W ATFORD TO LOUGHBOROUGH is a pretty straightforward car journey. It is less than a hundred miles in distance and its M1 all the way. It should take two hours at the most on a good day.

But today is not a good day. Today is a day I have been dreading for a while. Today is the day I meet up with the England medical staff to assess my recovery from a third serious injury in less than three years. I am worn out and I am worried.

Next year England will host Womens Euro 2005. It is the biggest womens football event ever to be staged in the country and our national coach, Hope Powell, has the best squad the country has ever had. And I am supposedly its star player.

But, at the moment, I cant play football. I can hardly walk. And I can only drive an automatic car, because that does not require me to use both my feet.

The broken leg I suffered six months ago, playing for New Jersey Wildcats against Delaware, is by far the worst injury of my career. So bad, in fact, it could be the end of my career.

It was caused by a reckless challenge from a stupid player who shouldnt even have been on the field. It still haunts me how dirty, vicious and unnecessary it was. I cant accept that. I cant understand that.

I dont know the girls name and I dont want to know the girls name. And hardly anybody knows how I have coped with it all. The answer is half a bottle of vodka every night until I just cant function any more. My father knows thats why he flew over to America to bring me home last month. But elsewhere it remains a secret.

Vodka numbs the pain. Vodka numbs everything. I drink it to feel better within myself, to make me a happier person. After a severe anterior cruciate ligament injury, meniscus damage to my knee and now a serious leg break, plus the fact that the Womens United Soccer Association league in the USA has suddenly folded, I find I need vodka a lot right now.

Lately I have asked myself: Whats the point? You have dreams all your life and you work hard to achieve them. Then, one morning, you wake up and its all gone. I cant comprehend that. I get emotional about it. I think thats because I never really got to show my true potential out in the States because of all my bad luck with injuries. And what am I supposed to do with my life now? There has been talk of a professional league in England but it hasnt happened yet.

I was born to be a footballer and I still want to be a footballer. I remain confident in my own ability and I still have self-belief. I know the player that I was, I know the potential that I have, and I know the level that I want to reach. But I am finding it so hard mentally to keep going because there is a fear that I am going to get crocked again. And I am struggling to handle that.

I hate not playing football. It is all I have ever wanted to do. Vodka makes me feel better about things. It makes me feel like I am in control. It makes me confident.

I turn off the M1 at junction 23 and head towards Loughborough. This is a town famous for sporting excellence; Lord Sebastian Coe studied and trained here. It is all too much for me to handle. I need to calm myself down. I see a sign for a Harvester pub and I dont need to think about what to do next. I park the car, walk into the bar and order myself a couple of vodkas, and then a couple more. I set about drinking myself into oblivion.

After a while maybe a few hours I suddenly decide I am ready to face the England camp after all. So I get back on the road and a few miles later I am there. I am late, but I dont seem to care. Right now, I have a fuck it mentality. It has taken a long time for me to get here, but here I am.

Lois Fidler, an old friend of mine, is one of the few people in my life who knows about my drinking habits. When I see her I find I cant really speak to her properly. Lois immediately recognizes that I am completely out of it so she hides me away in a dorm room to recover. But I have brought a bottle of vodka with me so I continue drinking in there.

Lois informs the medics that I am drunk. So they come to see me. They wont let me out of the room because I am intoxicated and obviously its not a good thing for people to see me like that. But the secret is out. Hope comes in and has a right go at me.

It is from this point in my life that I will have to accept that I have a problem regarding alcohol. I will soon see that it is a serious issue when a player turns up at camp pissed out of their face. For now, I am told I need to get treatment. So an appointment is arranged for me at the Priory. Theres a long road ahead, but afterwards it may be possible for me to one day achieve the dreams I have had all my life to be the footballer I have always wanted to be.

I WAS BORN Kelly Jayne Smith at Watford General Hospital on 29 October 1978. Grease was the big hit movie of the year, and Summer Nights was number one in the pop charts when I arrived in the world, despite it being a cold autumn day in Hertfordshire.

I was the first child of my devoted and loving parents Bernard and Carol. My brother Glen came along two years later and thats it, thats my family. I lived in the Garston area of Watford until my late teens, when I moved to the United States to play football. So I am a good old Garston girl through and through.

The first address I lived at in Garston was on Fourth Avenue. I went to Lea Farm Junior School, which was just down the street from us, literally five hundred yards away. So it was an easy walk to school every day as a youngster. Later we moved around the corner to Kilby Close. My parents still live in that same house, number 73, today.

Apparently, as soon as I could walk I had a ball at my feet. Mum and Dad tell me I learned to do both at around the same time. On a family holiday in the early 1980s I was seen trudging around the back garden of this house with a plastic ball, shuffling it along the ground with both feet as I toddled along.

As a girl at primary school I was on my own where football was concerned. Most of the girls spent playtime skipping, and playing tag or kiss-chase. But I was never with the girls at playtime. I was always with the boys, playing football.

We played wall ball and other games together. I forget the exact name of this one game we called it King of the Square or something but it was all about one-touch football. We also had jumpers for goalposts and played small-sided matches against each other.

There was a big wall at the end of our playground which was very good practice for hitting the ball when you only had one chance to do it. You couldnt take more than one touch so it was just about knocking the ball and then someone else would come in and knock it after you. You had to try to hit the ball as hard as you could, and if the ball went over the wall you were out.