Fran Kirby: ‘I was seeing different specialists, getting an oxygen tent’

Fran Kirby is back. Those are words every England fan wants to hear, everyone with an ounce of compassion has been desperate for and every other team fear.

On 15 April Chelsea’s manager, Emma Hayes, had announced the forward’s indefinite absence because of a fatigue problem for which they could find no answer. It was the latest in a long line of body blows that have blighted the supremely talented player’s career, from the death of her mother at 14 and the severe depression that followed and forced her out of the game to having pericarditis, a debilitating condition affecting the fluid-filled sac around the heart, for much of the 2019-20 season. This latest setback left the Euros looking a world away.

“I don’t sit there and stress about things that I can’t control,” Kirby says from St George’s Park after being selected for the tournament. “I think that’s one thing that I’ve had to learn, because it just creates negative energy.

“I didn’t even think about being in a Euros squad in February to April time. It wasn’t really in my mind. So I think that was a reason why I do feel so much better coming into this environment, because I wasn’t stressing myself out about missing certain situations.

“We didn’t really know how long it was going to take, if it was going to take two weeks, if it was going to take four months; it was just a case of working with the best specialists, getting the best advice that I could get and hopefully being ready to go into the squad.”

Her inclusion in the 28-player provisional squad was heartening but far from a guarantee she would be deemed fit for the final 23. She, like a number of others, had two weeks to prove her worth.

She felt she had done enough by the time, one by one, the 28 were called