Crichton bouncing back after Notts shock
THE term “versatile” would not begin to describe Leanne Crichton. The Glasgow City and Scotland midfielder has been a personal trainer, proprietor of a car wash business, and is now studying to become a social worker.
The 29-year-old was also, until recently, a professional footballer. That came to an acrimonious and distressing end when Notts County Ladies folded, leaving Crichton temporarily unemployed and homeless.
Devastating as that was, her pragmatic nature, honed by an east end of Glasgow upbringing, has seen her bounce back to her former club. Thanks to energy company SSE and the Football Partnership, Crichton will also have some financial stability until the Euros, after which a new chapter will start.
Yet, unlike many of her team-mates at club and international level, versatility does not extend to her playing position. She is an outand-out central midfielder, with the role only shifting in emphasis dependant on the team formation.
With her father being a decent Junior player, football was in the family but Crichton arrived at her first club, Cumbernauld Cosmos, by accident. Her younger brother was playing at a tournament in the town when she was spotted, aged 15, playing keepie-uppie by the woman who ran the girls’ club.
“If it hadn’t been for that, I might never have played for a team,” Crichton muses. “Yet literally within two years I was representing the national Under-17 and Under-19 sides.”
The player, who is working on her B coaching licence, is in her third spell at City, having also played for Whitehill Welfare, Celtic and Hibernian before rejoining in 2012. “When they asked me, they had one of the best sides in the 10-ina-row so it was a no-brainer to go back,” she says. Then at the end of 2014 came the decision to go professional and join Notts County in the FA Women’s Super League.” Although it all ended sourly, playing for Notts County in last year’s FA Cup final provided Crichton with a career highlight and gave her family an appreciation of why football means so much to her. “I’m sure my mum and others were thinking: ‘Is she ever going to get a real job?’, but when they came to Wembley and saw me playing in front of 33,000 people they could see my point,” she says. “These pivotal moments are one of the reasons why we sacrifice as much as we do.” Crichton’s family have been her biggest influence, making their own sacrifices when she was a teenager starting out. Her next cap for Scotland – almost certainly in the double header against Romania and Sweden – will be No 50 despite her international career only really taking off in 2013. She has a date in August on her mind. “I’ll be 30 on the day of the Euro final,” she says. “It will be good when Scotland get there because I can enjoy it a bit better.”