Catley: Grandfather won me over on Arsenal move
Ahead of making the 23-hour trip from Melbourne to join Arsenal, Steph Catley sat down with her 97-year-old grandparents and a map of north London. A lifelong Arsenal fan, Catley’s grandfather George grew up in the shadow of the club’s former Highbury stadium. Now, his granddaughter was the women’s team’s latest signing.
“I involved my grandfather a little when I was making my decision to join Arsenal – and he was pretty persuasive,” Catley says, a month on from the announcement. “I always knew he was an Arsenal supporter, and throughout my childhood I had lots of different jerseys for favourite players, like I had a Gareth Bale Tottenham jersey – and he was not that happy about it,” she said laughing at the memory.
“He’s one of my favourite people in the world and it makes it extra special. I got to give him a jersey [when I signed] and he was so excited, it was just a really lovely moment for me.”
She is one of three Matildas to sign for Arsenal this year, along with goalkeeper Lydia Williams last month and forward Caitlin Foord, who joined in January and played just two cup games before coronavirus halted the season. Though Williams injured an ankle in preseason, the other two Matildas could make their Champions League debuts – in a quarter-final against Paris St-germain tonight – before playing in the Women’s Super League.
“All credit to the girls for what they’ve done to get us in this position and as for us – we can kind of just come in and enjoy the ride,”
Foord joked. The pair join
via video call to discuss their fixture, and Catley, 26, admitted it is a slightly “daunting” prospect: “It’s a strange situation to be in, usually when you’re going into a Champions League game you’ve already played 20 games and been training for months.
“The first game after lockdown, to be a Champions League game against PSG, it’s daunting. But the preparation’s been good, everyone’s looking fresh. It will be so exciting to play football again.”
The draw of such high-level competition is what made Arsenal such an appealing club after all, as the last English team to win the tournament in 2007.
The manager is Australian Joe Montemurro. He coached Catley and Williams at their Melbourne City team before joining Arsenal in 2017, and had been trying to tempt Catley to come to London for “a few years”. Eight of the Matildas squad are now playing in the English top division – including captain Sam Kerr at Chelsea.
With a home World Cup in 2023, Foord says players moving to the fully professional WSL could be exactly what they need to make a breakthrough at major tournaments, after a disappointing last-16 exit at France 2019.
With the national team’s head coach job vacant, Montemurro has been linked with going home to lead them, but the manager said he has not been approached by the Football Federation Australia, and insisted: “My job is at Arsenal.”
And the job at hand is the Champions League.