Fran Kirby & Loss
We aren’t really told how to heal the pain of loss or how to process grief. Only that ‘things will get better’.
Carrying that load is something I’ve had to do through much of both my childhood and professional years. In the midst of churning out articles, riding the employment/unemployment wave, and working my way up the proverbial career ladder, the weight of depression, chronic panic disorder, OCD and cyclical panic attacks have been a constant companion.
Sport and more specifically football provided an inkling of respite from those moments of despair; the love affair began with Liverpool in my childhood years — thanks to my dad’s influences. More recently, however, I made the transition away from the men’s side of football to the women’s game.
That’s exactly where Francesca Kirby caught my eye.
Kirby is a player who possesses it all — speed, natural flair, creativity in attack, and a drive to hunt the ball down whenever possession evades her. I was always quite confused when I often saw her sidelined both for her club Chelsea and also internationally for England. It’s only when I read into her background that I started to put the pieces together.
Having lost her mother, Denise, at the age of 14, Kirby fell into a deep depression in her teenage years becoming distant from the game she loved and excelled at. So much so, that at one point, the Englishwoman hung up the boots, walked away from the training ground and left for a life outside of football.
“I’d spent the near part of 10 years playing football, and I decided I just wanted to be Fran”
As the weight of the sadness seemed to peak in the years that came after, it was in the midst of that very hurricane of emotions that Kirby rose again, fueled by her loss, this time intent on making the most of her skills and passions.
Nobody really speaks of how difficult it is to do that in the way she did; to rise and return to the ‘before times’, to discard the weight and choose to move forward. Having been in and out of therapy, counselling, medication, and extreme lows myself, the drive to do so comes from a place of inner strength, an urge that surpasses even the heaviness of grief.
Kirby chose to return to football despite her loss, and what followed were two seasons to remember at Reading. The then 19 year old became the 2012 FA Women’s Premier League Southern Division’s top scorer, netting an absurd 32 times in 21 appearances. The campaign in the following year finished in similar fashion — another 24 goals in 16 appearances.
Playing off the left, the midfielder pulled strings, pressed with guile, and became an attacking live-wire in front of goal. This saw her free herself from the shackles of her pain to arrive at the peak of women’s football, winning the inaugural WSL2 Players’ Player of the Year — an awards ceremony I watched with bated breath.
That progression put her on a path with Emma Hayes and Chelsea in 2015. Kirby has won the WSL title (thrice) and FA Cup, their first Champions League goal, and even more recently surpassing Eniola Aluko as the club’s all-time scorer with 70 goals.
Yet, as optimistic as things had been, another setback was on the horizon. A regression to the mean, this time in the form of pericarditis — a highly debilitating condition that causes fluid to inflame the muscles that protect the heart.
The Englishwoman suffered from intense chest pain, was lightheaded, disoriented, and struggled to walk down the stairs, effectively having to “lay on the sofa for two months”. The toll of that period of absence, however, was not noticeable in her return to the starting XI. Indeed across this 2020/21 season Kirby has been simply unplayable.
Part of that comes down to her natural flair on the front foot, her drive to hunt down possession in the attacking third and her quick turn of pace down to the left flank. She strays towards that left side capturing in brief moments her Reading days, leaving defenders wanting as she drifts in a cross for Sam Kerr and co. Yet it’s in a more central, advanced no.10 position, where Kirby is at her most lethal.
Two Sundays ago, her four-goal performance against Kelly Chambers’ Reading in the league certainly proved that.
A perfect hat-trick wasn’t the only achievement Kirby racked up that day — 8 successful dribbles, 20 pressures — second in the table — and joint-top for blocks (3) pay a far more fitting analysis of how important the midfielder is, both from an attacking and defensive perspective, when she plays directly behind the strikers. And that’s without mentioning her winning goal against Casey Stoney’s well-drilled Manchester United not a week later.
But even with the attacker in the form of her life, Kirby never forgets her past, her grief, her pain, and her ongoing management of her mental health. She states that “it’s okay not to be okay, it’s okay to be upset and need to speak to someone”, and how her mum’s memory is a motivational tool for her.
From the haunting of her illness, mental health struggles amidst the World Cup and battling depression, she remains an example for me, and many others, that there is a way out of the dark depths of real-life tragedy.
And not just a way out, but a way forward.
With each setback, Kirby has risen as if she’s been sizzling on the sidelines, ready to attack and press, donning her pain, and leveling up time and time again with goals and assists aplenty.
While she continues to grow from strength to strength, I can only hope to mirror that resurgence in my own writing and recovery — with a long ball over the defensive obstacles taking me straight through to goal.
