LifeTimes with Fran Kirby
The Game
The Times
3.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2019
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the age of 14, Fran Kirby had to deal with the sudden and devastating death of her mother. The next day she went back to school, carrying on her life as normal until grief and depression hit her hard, leading her to give up football, the game she loved.
This summer Kirby, now 25, is England’s leading creative force at a World Cup they hope to win and has earned the nickname “Mini Messi”.
In this episode of the new in-depth podcast, LifeTimes, England’s leading women’s footballer tells Matt Dickinson how she overcame a shattering loss to rebuild her life and her career.
Make sure you subscribe so that you never miss an episode, including the opening show with Paul Pogba.
This episode is hosted by The Times Chief Sports Writer Matt Dickinson and produced by Lucy Lavery, it is a Times Sport production, to discover more of our award winning journalism visit www.thetimes.co.uk/sport
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And the Hello, I'm Matt Dickinson, and for this edition of L lifetimes, I sat down with Fran Kirby. |
| 0:21.0 | The Chelsea in England forward, once described as a mini-messy, will carry |
| 0:25.6 | many of England's hopes at the World Cup the summer, but she reveals just how tough it has |
| 0:30.0 | been to make it to the top. The journey from 1991's 80 minute matches to a 2019-19-19 sellout opener at the Park, France should not be underestimated or forgotten. |
| 0:46.8 | The time is now. |
| 0:50.0 | England feel like that they have been on some trek slow burners throughout the 2000s led by |
| 0:55.2 | Kelly Smith they hit their high point four years ago a bronze medal which is cherished |
| 1:00.4 | in the women's game now they are going for gold navigated by Neville |
| 1:06.0 | powered by Paris it on by Kirby. So welcome, I'm sure we'll get into a lot more detail about gender equality and |
| 1:28.1 | where the women's game is going but you know first wanted to talk about your |
| 1:31.1 | game itself I mean you're 25 now I mean does that feel like |
| 1:35.3 | coming into prime years? How does it feel so? Yeah I mean I feel like I've been around |
| 1:40.9 | for a long time now you know see when I first came into the scene |
| 1:43.7 | with England, you know, people were a bit surprised of, you know, who I was as a player and, you know, |
| 1:48.3 | coming from the only WSL2 team, you know, I did feel very inexperienced compared to a lot of the other girls. I didn't really |
| 1:55.0 | pay much at youth age groups, whereas a lot of the girls had come through at England, you know, 15, 17s, |
| 2:00.1 | 90s, I didn't do any of that really. A bit the time but now you know obviously I'm a bit more |
| 2:05.8 | established you know in the team and you know I'm playing a lot in front of a lot of big |
| 2:11.5 | crowds so you know I am experienced in that sense. |
| 2:14.0 | And I mean I say don't want to load with too many expectations but you know a lot of people saying |
| 2:20.0 | very positive things about you I mean mean Phil Neville, obviously the England manager said, |
| 2:25.0 | I think you know, I'll take our number tens over Brazil's, which again I'm obviously reference to Marta who is a sort of icon in the game. I mean when you hear stuff like that how does do you think great or do you think oh I could do without it? |
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