Her hero is Gordon Banks, and now Mary Earps has a chance to match his 1966 World Cup winner’s medal with one of her own.
But the Lioness has a surprising link to another England goalkeeping great.
“She used to live in Peter Shilton’s old house. When he was at [Nottingham] Forest he lived in West Bridgford,” said Paul Alexander, who gave Earps a Saturday job as a shop assistant. “I’m sure they were in the same one – if not then the next door down … There’s something about the place.”
Earps already has one more winner’s medal for England than Shilton, thanks to her match-winning performance against Germany in the 2022 Euro finals. Shilton couldn’t quite rescue England in the Italia 90 semi-final penalty shootout.
But so far her career has had many more twists and turns than Shilton’s, who twice won the European Cup with Nottingham Forest in 1979 and 1980.
Earps nearly retired from football three years ago after being dropped by the then England coach Phil Neville, only to force her way back into the side under Sarina Wiegman. The Lionesses’ kit supplier, Nike, believed she was too unimportant to bother to sell replicas of her shirt, only for her fans to bring the corporate giant to heel.
And so far in Australia, her saves have been vital in keeping the Lionesses in the tournament. She has conceded only three goals in six games.
It dates back to her first taste of goalkeeping glory when she pulled on the gloves in a game for West Bridgford Colts. “I was a young girl who wasn’t afraid of diving around in the mud, I wasn’t afraid of the ball and so I saved it,” she said earlier this year. “That’s how the great love affair started.”
Alexander gave Earps one of her first jobs when she was 17, at Inspirations in south Nottingham, selling greetings cards and toys.
“She came in one day to ask for a job,” he said. “You might get 50 people come in and ask, but she just had something about her – confident, bubbly. I thought, ‘Yeah, we’ll give her a go’. She got on well with everybody. She always used to talk about her football.
“When we were quiet in the afternoons – we’ve got a box of footballs by the front door, and she used to pick a ball out and start juggling it up and down, doing keepie-uppies. You could tell – she’s pretty useful, bit more than a goalie maybe.”
Earps juggled several jobs while she studied for a degree at Loughborough University in information management and business studies, and began her career in football at a time when the Women’s Super League was semi-professional. She worked in cafes and cinemas and as a goalkeeping coach while playing for Doncaster Rovers Belles, then Birmingham City, Bristol Academy and Reading, and was rewarded with her first England call-up in 2017.
After a season in Germany at VfL Wolfsburg, she joined Manchester United in the now fully professional WSL. But her international career was stalling: she slipped to third choice when Neville was England coach and was then left out entirely.
“She said: ‘Look, I’m thinking about retiring’,” said Tina Rehana, who became Earps’s commercial manager in 2020. Earps reconsidered after advice from United colleague David de Gea and hasn’t looked back.
Rehana, meanwhile, has helped the player build a huge social media presence with more than 1.1 million followers on TikTok and Instagram – her England teammates call her “the TikTok Queen” – and also set up her fashion brand, MAE27.
after newsletter promotion
The clothing line came into focus after Earps learned that Nike was repeating its decision not to make any replica goalkeepers’ shirts for the international women’s teams. On the eve of the tournament, Earps described it as “hugely disappointing and very hurtful”, with family and friends unable to buy a shirt with her name on.
“She really wanted her fans to have something to wear,” Rehana said. “So we decided to do a T-shirt line. One said ‘Be unapologetically yourself’” – a quote from her speech accepting the Fifa best women’s goalkeeper award last February – “and the other was ‘Girls know the offside rule too’.”
Earps used her business degree to good effect, Rehana said. “She designed the logo herself, the T-shirt herself, she came to the printers, and she’s so meticulous. She actually helped ship the first few orders herself. She’s just so passionate about involving her fans and she could see them wearing them at the first England friendly before they went to the World Cup camp. She was so emotional about that.
“There’s been a lot of fans in Australia with the T-shirts and it has really empowered her seeing them in the crowd.”
One of the fans was 16-year-old Emmy Somauroo, who wanted to meet her hero at the warmup game against Portugal. Earps spotted her after the match and climbed over the barrier for a photo.
Somauroo began a petition calling on Nike to overturn the decision, which now has well over 50,000 signatures, and the shirt was even mentioned by the BBC commentary team during England’s win over Australia in the semi-final.
“I started the petition because I wanted to show Mary our support and it went from there,” Somauroo said. “It’s amazing to get so much support, not just from friends and family but the whole women’s football community and people outside.”