How Earps went from £25 a game to 'Mary, Queen of Stops'

"She changed goalkeeping. She changed the game. But she hasn't changed."

It takes just 11 words for former England team-mate Ellen White to neatly sum up the impact of Mary Earps in a new BBC Sport documentary.

Essentially, she is saying, there's something about Mary Earps.

And it's something that'll be felt long after the shock international retirement - announced this week - and the subsequent negative headlines.

From the peripatetic days bouncing around a handful of clubs and juggling six part-time jobs in the amateur women's football era to juggling endorsements galore as a one-person global brand.

From lying in an inconsolable heap on the kitchen floor barely able to speak after being dropped by then England boss Phil Neville in 2020 to finding her voice to take on sportswear giant Nike.

And lastly, perhaps most long-lastingly, helping to flip the perception of women's goalkeeping on its head.

Her presence on the pitch and her prescience off it - a willingness to embrace TikTok is widely credited with her huge popularity - has helped make Earps an unstoppable force.

This week's retirement is not a full stop of course.

Part of the 32-year-old's stated reason for stepping back from international football is to concentrate on her club career - she's currently at Paris St-Germain.

But the end of an international era inevitably leads to questions about legacy.

"The legacy I want to leave is leaving the game in a better place," she says.

"That's what it's always been. To try to leave women's goalkeeping in a better place than it was.

"I think in more recent times what's been added to that is to make goalkeeping cool.

"I just think representation matters – you can't be what you can't see and hopefully I can represent to people a goalkeeper, but also somebody who's been through a lot and who is still standing, still swinging. Hopefully I can encourage others to do the same."

Anyone looking for a source of encouragement from Earps' career has plenty to go at.

But changing the game seemed a million miles away when the Nottingham-born keeper started out.

In a series of in-depth interviews for documentary Mary Earps: Queen of Stops, Earps and her family open up about that journey to the top of her sport – and some of the big decisions en route.

Becoming a goalkeeper was a no-brainer.

"From my very first game I knew I wanted to be a goalkeeper," she says of an opening match between her side West Bridgford Colts and Hucknall Town. "There was a penalty given against us and I saved it. My dad said, in typical dad fashion, 'see, if one of the other girls was in goal they wouldn't have saved that' and for me, that was it."

"I always knew she'd be good," her brother Joel says. "Something my dad tried to get her to do was to try to develop into a goalkeeper with attributes that weren't really a part of the women's game then. A goalkeeper that was good with her feet. A goalkeeper that would come out and collect the ball well."

But despite her father's high standards, Earps was taking her first footballing steps in a radically different era.

A 17-year-old Earps made her senior debut for Doncaster Belles in the inaugural season of the Women's Super League in 2011. At that time her match fee was £25.

By the time the WSL turned professional in 2018, Earps already had eight teams on her footballing resume.

"I think my Wikipedia page probably looks a bit colourful when you look at all the teams I've played for but that was kind of the reality back then," Earps says.

The amateur status at that time meant that players were juggling travel - "three, four or five hours to a WSL club", remembers Earps – and a day job, around football. Earps burned the midnight oil more than most – at one time she had six part-time jobs, including working at a toy shop and a cinema.

As a result, her career was at a crossroads when she graduated with a degree in information management and business studies from Loughborough University in 2016.

"My fears were [the women's game] wasn't sustainable," she says. "The infrastructure for women's football was not going to allow it to go anywhere.

"Going to university was definitely always the plan and when I graduated I thought 'well, I can either go for something that I really want, or, I can try and make a living'. It felt like it was worth taking a bit of a shot and a bit of a gamble on my football career and myself."

Earps will no doubt take some time now to look back and reflect on how that gamble has paid off.

But part of Earps' impressive skill has been her ability to make and advocate for change in real time. On multiple occasions during her career she has spoken up for the need for specific goalkeeping coaches, something she didn't have access to when starting out.

Earps' international career was very nearly over before it had started.

There's a scene in the BBC Sport documentary Lionesses: Champions of Europe in which Earps describes the impact England coach Sarina Wiegman has had on her life.

Earps clicks her fingers to the lens as she describes a Sarina Sliding Doors-style shift, saying: "Sarina came in and life changed, literally like that. Drop of a dime."

Aged 28, she had been in a two-year international exile prior to Wiegman's arrival in September 2021. She had played her last game under Neville two years earlier against Germany at Wembley.

When she found out via Instagram in March 2020 that she'd been dropped by Neville she hit rock bottom. "It felt like my world was ending," she remembers. "I opened my phone getting ready to scroll over lunch and yeah, I wasn't in the squad. I'd not had an email, not had a call, not a text, no notification from anyone.

"That was the moment where I was in pieces on the kitchen floor."

In piecing together any story on the impact or legacy of Earps on women's football, one thing is almost unequivocal.

Without Wiegman's appointment, her journey to winning the Euros and twice being voted the world's best goalkeeper wouldn't have happened.

Earps' recollections of her and Wiegman's first conversation illuminate one of the other ways she's changed the game – through her vulnerability.

The strength of their bond and instant connection also offers insight into Wiegman's reported frustration at Earps' retirement this week.

"The first conversation (with Sarina) was really emotional," Earps says. "It was tears and surprise and vulnerability and I don't think I had ever really shared that vulnerability with a manager before.

"It was strange for me that that happened within a few minutes of talking.

"She was very clear from the start: 'This is your opportunity, it's up to you what you do with it'."

Earps made her WSL debut for Doncaster Belles aged 17 in 2011

'I'm going to do it the Mary Earps way'

"She just needed someone to believe in her," former Manchester United and England team-mate Alessia Russo says.

On the pitch Earps drew on the pain of her England exile and began the journey towards the record-breaking goalkeeper she would become.

"It happened at the same time as me figuring out who I was as a person and being like, no, this is who I am. I don't want to be somebody else," she says.

"And it's the same as a goalkeeper.

"This is what I think I'm good at. Communication. I'm an organiser. Trying to influence the game in certain ways.

"I'm not going to try and do something I'm not good at like stand on the halfway line like Manuel Neuer would do, because that's not who I am. I'm going to try and do it the Mary Earps way."

Off the field, the darker times also helped evolve the Mary Earps way, sparking a revolution in her attitude to mental health, which has had as much of an impact on the women's game and its fanbase as her prowess in goal.

"It's become a massive part of who I am now, to be more vulnerable and to be more present," she says.

The zenith of that new-found vulnerability came at arguably the pinnacle of her career.

In February 2023, the Manchester United keeper was voted the world's best goalkeeper at Fifa's awards after inspiring England to their first major women's title at Euro 2022.

Her acceptance speech garnered as many headlines as her form.

She said the award was for "anyone who's ever been in a dark place" and added: "Sometimes success looks like this – collecting trophies – sometimes it's just waking up and putting one step in front of the other."

Nike campaign was 'brave and inspiring'

Mary Earps celebrates winning best goalkeeper for the second year in a row alongside England team-mates Alessia Russo (left) and Ella Toone (right)

A year later she won the award again, as well as being named the BBC's Sport Personality of the Year, after saving a penalty as the Lionesses narrowly lost the World Cup final to Spain.

"Even when she won Fifa Best Goalkeeper for a second time, she was still the same Mary in training the next day. The Mary who wanted to be better than the day before."

Former Manchester United and England team-mate Ella Toone reveals a crucial reason behind Earps' incredible career - the steeliness that exists alongside the vulnerability.

Full-back Lucy Bronze recounts an instructive conversation long before Earps was established as England's first choice.

"I remember her saying, 'I know I have got what it takes to be No. 1'," Bronze says. "She had that belief."

Sportswear brand Nike felt the full force of said steeliness in the run-up to the 2023 World Cup when they initially made the decision not to put Earps' replica goalkeeper jersey on sale.

Earps spoke combatively about the decision on the eve of the tournament – putting herself in the centre of a media storm and also adding an additional burden in a high-profile tournament for which both she and the Lionesses were already in the spotlight given they were among the favourites.

Her comments led to a petition, garnering more than 150,000 signatures and a sharp U-turn by Nike.

"You always see young people want to be strikers and score the goals but Mary sets the tone for being a goalkeeper and how important that can be too," Russo says.

"To start that campaign was really powerful but also really brave and inspiring to do while you're about to play one of the biggest tournaments of your lives."

Mary Earps' status as a firm fan favourite was cemented when she won BBC's Sports Personality of the Year in 2023

Once more with Earps, much like her retirement this week, it reflects her uncompromising nature.

Earps says she felt compelled to speak because the Nike standpoint was "telling a whole demographic of people that they're not important, that the position they play isn't important".

She added: "I did feel the pressure but, regardless of how I performed, it was basically a simple moral question of… if you get asked that question and you don't answer it honestly, and you have a fantastic tournament or you have a bad tournament, when you look at yourself in the mirror, after your career is done, what are you going to think?"

"What if I'd have said it after the tournament? It wouldn't have been as powerful."

Powerful, unapologetic pre-tournament statements - sound familiar?

Perhaps Earps' iconic international career was destined to end this way.

• Watch the full documentary, Mary Earps: Queen of Stops, on BBC iPlayer now and on BBC One on 2 July at 22:40 BST.