Rachel Furness was Northern Ireland's award-winning record goalscorer but everything was not right in her world. This is why she walked away, and why she came back
After the final whistle of a 5-0 defeat by eventual winners England, Northern Ireland's players and staff gathered in the corner of the pitch, singing and dancing in front of the travelling support.
Just over a month after Northern Ireland's joyful exit from the competition, the 35-year-old released a statement making herself unavailable for selection for international duty for the foreseeable future for "personal reasons". She boarded the plane to the Southampton, and, with her customary smile, made history stepping out against Norway in Northern Ireland women's first match at a major tournament.Midway through the tournament she wanted to go home for the sake of her mental health."Everything just seemed so in place on the football side, it was going really well."Off the pitch, she had been processing the end of a long-term relationship alongside her father's illness.
"I love representing Northern Ireland, and taking that risk of stepping back, never knowing if I'd step back in, was one of the biggest decisions of my life. Having scored the opening goal in the first leg of Northern Ireland's Euro 2022 qualification play-off against Ukraine, played on for 10 minutes with a broken leg and then celebrated victory in the return fixture by jigging about on crutches, Euro 2022 was to be a glorious climax to her career."In the months before I did step back I know I wasn't in the best place," said Furness, who added she still works on her mental health daily.
"If you take Northern Ireland away from me, and in this case I took it away as it was my decision, that's a massive part of me.” "None of them knew what had went on in my personal life. They just see it from the outside and they only know how much I let them know. "It's never been made a normal conversation," she says. "It's 'oh, the psychologist is in, book an appointment', or a case of 'what's wrong?'.A Northern Ireland return was something that Furness never expected, but, as life improved on and off the pitch, the prospect became something she could consider, even welcome.
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