I thought injuries were punishment for missing friend’s funeral
Lucy Bronze has been haunted by guilt since skipping the funeral of a footballing soulmate while on England duty, she tells Katie Whyatt
Lucy Bronze has not told this story before. Of the friend who died in a car crash when they were each 17, the funeral she missed to play for England Under-19s and the subsequent guilt that left her certain that a year-long injury was punishment for not being there. During her accession to two-times Champions League winner and Ballon d’or nominee, she has only previously shared her secret grief with a sports psychologist.
Bronze and Sam Gattens had been thick as thieves: he was Bronze’s best friend at Duchess Community High School, the captain of the first team she played for and the first boy to accept Bronze, and her England teammate Lucy Staniforth, as one of their own.
“The only girl I used to be friends with was Lucy – she used to come and play, eventually, but when I was younger it was just him and the other boys around the street,” Bronze recalls. “He was the first boy that was, like: ‘Lucy’s just one of us.’ Everybody loved him, and because he liked me everybody else went: ‘Lucy’s part of the team.’ That was kind of him. I think about him a lot because he probably was the big reason why I was accepted.”
On June 14, 2009, six days after passing his driving test, Gattens was killed at 1.30am in the shadow of Alnwick Castle when the car he was driving hit a tree at a left-hand bend and flipped onto its roof. The Lion Bridge where the crash took place is a sleepy, idyllic spot straddling the River Aln and five days later he was buried at St Michael’s Church, a five-minute walk away, in a coffin draped in red and white flowers for Sunderland.
That same summer, Bronze attended the Under-19s Euros. England won the competition – their first and still only major gold medal at any age group – with a team featuring Bronze’s future Lyon team-mate Izzy Christiansen, Atletico Madrid’s Toni Duggan and England vice-captain Jordan Nobbs. “But it was always a thing I kind of regretted, probably the only thing I’ve ever regretted in football,” Bronze says. “The only thing I’ve ever won with England, but I missed my best friend’s funeral to go to it. I probably did the wrong thing.”
She does not believe in “religion, or anything like that”, but after Gattens’s death the injuries started: four knee injuries, aged 18, a career almost derailed. “I had to see a sports psychologist because I couldn’t run,” Bronze says. “No matter what I did, I just couldn’t – my knee just wasn’t working. I’ve actually never really told people this, but I went to see a sports psychologist and at the end of this conversation I started speaking about him. She was like, ‘Do you feel like you deserve to be injured for a year because you missed his funeral and you won with England, and he died?’ I just broke down.
“I thought, maybe because I missed that, and I had something, I’m getting what I deserve by being injured for so long. I don’t even believe in religion, I don’t even believe in those kind of things, but when you regret something yourself and then something bad happens to you, you want to say, ‘I deserve this because of that’. They
‘Everybody loved Sam and because he liked me, everybody else went: ‘Lucy is part of the team.’ That was kind of him and he was probably the big reason why I was accepted’
were like, but your injury’s got nothing to do with that. I think that’s why my knee injuries never bothered me. People tell me it must have been so hard, but I got on with it because there’s a lot worse things that can happen. That was always in my head – [Gattens’s death] was the worst thing that could have happened.”
People grieve differently. There is a sepia-hued photograph of the pair on Bronze’s Instagram, as kids, in matching purple kits, goalposts looming in the background, which Bronze has captioned “Football … gives me a way to pay tribute”.
“I speak to his little brother. A newspaper wanted to do something about it once and I said no. His family were like: ‘No, it’s fine. If you want to speak about him, you can. You need to go and play for England.’ His mum always says he’d rather I’d be playing football.”
Throughout her youth career, Bronze was “always told that I wasn’t going to make it as an England player, that I wasn’t good enough”. At one camp, she was the only outfield player who did not play a single minute and nowadays she jokes with Nobbs and Christiansen that England “didn’t like me when I was younger. I was thinking, if I leave England, am I leaving England forever?”
The 10th anniversary of Gattens’s death fell on the same day as England’s second World Cup group match this summer. “I didn’t tell anyone,” Bronze says, “but then I don’t really speak to people about it. But it’s definitely something I think about.” Every time she plays? “Yeah, because people have bad stories about boys’ football – and I never had a single problem because he was my mate.”
The memory of Gatten has remained close throughout another stellar year: Champions League winner again, another Ballon d’or nomination, a World Cup silver ball. Five months have passed since that night in Le Havre, and England’s quarter-final against Norway, when Bronze ran the show from right-back with a special kind of glee and crowned her finest display in a Lionesses shirt with a first-time finish that left manager Phil Neville purring that she was “the best player in the world, without a shadow of a doubt”.
All she had planned to do was run. “One of their players said in the media that England don’t like to run. Phil said to me: ‘Do you know Norway said that? Do they realise that you’re part of this England team?’ I was thinking, if she doesn’t think I can run, I’m going to make her run with me. I wasn’t really thinking about the game – I was just trying to push this player. I find little challenges like that. I was thinking, I’m going to make you look stupid for those comments. It was fun and we scored.”
She will always reflect on 2019 as a “disappointing year” until she wins a World Cup. “That was the only trophy I really wanted this year. I didn’t want anything else.” She does not remember every detail of the semi-final defeat by the United States but it still hurts. “I probably felt it more [because] it was in Lyon. Every day now, walking in the stadium, I keep getting these flashbacks and these nightmares of that game.
“I know the stadium really well. I knew where there was a space where no one would know you’re there. That’s where I walked after the game: sat down behind these curtains because I knew people wouldn’t be able to find me. The psychologist came to search for me and I was like, ‘You need to leave me’. The World Cup’s been so hard to get over because as soon as I went back into club football, the reminder was there every single day. I’m probably not as over it as maybe other players are.”
It has been harder this time, Bronze says, because “there’s no distraction to take away from this World Cup”.
After the 2013 Euros, Hope Powell was sacked as manager. The 2015 World Cup? Bronze medal. After Euro 2017, Eni Aluko, Mark Sampson’s dismissal and FA turmoil. “We always had another focus and something else to go on to, to forget about what just happened. You go back and play for your teams and that’s fine, but with England, it was still quite raw, still just in everyone’s mind. You weren’t really focusing on anything else at England. As soon as the date changes and it says 2020, everyone’s head is thinking, ‘Olympics’. I think that’s going to happen pretty quickly, and I think Team GB’S got as good a chance as anybody of getting a gold medal this year.”
‘I’m not religious, but I thought I was getting what I deserved by being injured for so long’