Anyone looking for a source of encouragement from Earps’ career has plenty to go at.
But changing the game seemed a million miles away when the Nottingham-born keeper started out.
In a series of in-depth interviews for documentary Mary Earps: Queen of Stops, Earps and her family open up about that journey to the top of her sport – and some of the big decisions en route.
Becoming a goalkeeper was a no-brainer.
“From my very first game I knew I wanted to be a goalkeeper,” she says of an opening match between her side West Bridgford Colts and Hucknall Town. “There was a penalty given against us and I saved it. My dad said, in typical dad fashion, ‘see, if one of the other girls was in goal they wouldn’t have saved that’ and for me, that was it.”
“I always knew she’d be good,” her brother Joel says. “Something my dad tried to get her to do was to try to develop into a goalkeeper with attributes that weren’t really a part of the women’s game then. A goalkeeper that was good with her feet. A goalkeeper that would come out and collect the ball well.”
But despite her father’s high standards, Earps was taking her first footballing steps in a radically different era.
A 17-year-old Earps made her senior debut for Doncaster Belles in the inaugural season of the Women’s Super League in 2011. At that time her match fee was £25.
By the time the WSL turned professional in 2018, Earps already had eight teams on her footballing resume.
“I think my Wikipedia page probably looks a bit colourful when you look at all the teams I’ve played for but that was kind of the reality back then,” Earps says.
The amateur status at that time meant that players were juggling travel – “three, four or five hours to a WSL club”, remembers Earps – and a day job, around football. Earps burned the midnight oil more than most – at one time she had six part-time jobs, including working at a toy shop and a cinema.
As a result, her career was at a crossroads when she graduated with a degree in information management and business studies from Loughborough University in 2016.
“My fears were [the women’s game] wasn’t sustainable,” she says. “The infrastructure for women’s football was not going to allow it to go anywhere.
“Going to university was definitely always the plan and when I graduated I thought ‘well, I can either go for something that I really want, or, I can try and make a living’. It felt like it was worth taking a bit of a shot and a bit of a gamble on my football career and myself.”
Earps will no doubt take some time now to look back and reflect on how that gamble has paid off.
But part of Earps’ impressive skill has been her ability to make and advocate for change in real time. On multiple occasions during her career she has spoken up for the need for specific goalkeeping coaches, something she didn’t have access to when starting out.
