To all women's footballers out there, this World Cup is for us

There’s been a palpable change in women’s football since the Lionesses lifted the European Championship trophy. It’s a bittersweet moment for former footballers throughout Old Blighty who are unwittingly riddled with envy for the pathway that formed for the new generation coming through. Although this is what we all fought for, in our own ways.

The unfolding of the women’s game, we thought, was at its pinnacle last summer, but oh how wrong we were. This World Cup campaign has been something else, and the trail of opportunity it will leave behind is inconceivable.

When I was an aspiring young football player, there were opportunities, don't get me wrong. Girls teams were set up by dads of players after years of us playing with the boys who never passed the ball and so we’d resort to tackling our own boy-teammates with vengeance.

It was normal, but even at the age of 10, I wouldn’t stand for it. In an ‘If you don’t pass me the ball, I'll take it,’ and a sassy celebration to boot, kind of way.

Double that with being brought up in the Midlands there was no route to step up the ladder. The only real way to ‘make it’ was to get a scholarship to the USA - and that was a one-in-a-million pick, but the only way to have a sniff of being professional.

Manchester United Women’s team was a low-league side and no one knew if Manchester City had a girls' team, there were two centres of excellence around me but only up until the age of 16, after that, you were released into open-age county league. The ‘progression’ into women’s football was non-existent.

So, my love for the beautiful game forced my hand at 16 and I moved out, and far.

For two years I played in what is now Women’s Super League academies, against Chelsea, Arsenal and