Mary Earps made indelible mark with England and leaves big gap to fill
That the decision to step away has prompted such emotional responses, coming less than six weeks before the first game of England's European Championship defence, is a testament to her popularity and the standing she has in the game.
Earps's international career has been a rollercoaster, which hit a low when she was dropped by Phil Neville in March 2020. The goalkeeper thought it was a one‑off, that she would be back, but she was omitted from the next squad, then the next, and it was not until Sarina Wiegman arrived as head coach that things took an upward turn. In that year away from the international game she thought she would never pull on the shirt again, and that took an emotional and mental toll.
No one, least of all Earps, could have predicted what would lie ahead. Injuries to Karen Bardsley and Ellie Roebuck opened the door for Earps to start under Wiegman and she grabbed the opportunity. She went from third-choice goalkeeper at the 2019 World Cup in France and out in the cold in 2020 to the No 1 for the Lionesses at the home Euro 2022.
Her rise following a phenomenal run to the first major international title for the senior women's side was staggering. A key component is she comes across as fun and personable, her iconic hip swinging on the press conference table after the players crashed Wiegman's post-match press conference after the Euro 2022 final victory thrusting her personality to the fore.
With the spotlight comes responsibility and Earps rose to it, being a vocal and passionate advocate for goalkeeping and goalkeeper coaching, speaking candidly about the lack of proper coaching available to her generation of keepers for much of their careers and supporting efforts to increase the popularity of the position.
Then, there was the challenging of the England sponsors Nike on the eve of the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand where, when asked about the lack of availability of replica women's goalkeeper kits, she paused, clearly emotional and weighing up whether it was the right time to speak out, before launching into an impassioned plea for the sportswear giant to make a U-turn on their decision to not sell the kits. She said: 'I can't really sugarcoat this in any way, so I am not going to try. It is hugely disappointing and very hurtful.' She forced change in the months that followed.
At that World Cup Earps shone on the pitch, collecting the Golden Glove after England endured heartbreak, losing 1-0 against Spain in the final. She earned the nickname 'queen of stops' and footage of her expletive‑laden reaction after saving a penalty to keep the deficit to a single goal went viral.
She was named The Best Fifa women's goalkeeper in 2022 and 2023 for those tournament heroics and won BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2023.
Sign up to Moving the Goalposts
No topic is too small or too big for us to cover as we deliver a twice-weekly roundup of the wonderful world of women's football
after newsletter promotion
Her popularity has been enhanced by her social media presence, particularly on TikTok. Meanwhile, she became the first women's football player to have a waxwork at Madame Tussauds having won a public vote. She also launched her own line of T-shirts inspired by her speech when she won her first Fifa award in 2022, dedicating the win to 'anyone who's ever been in a dark place' before saying: 'You can achieve anything you set your mind to. Sometimes success looks like this – collecting trophies – sometimes it's just waking up and putting one step in front of the other. There's only one of you in the world, and that's more than good enough. Be unapologetically yourself.'
In recent months Earps has found her playing time with England reduced, with Chelsea's Hannah Hampton preferred to the goalkeeper capped 53 times. It is a widely held view that Hampton is better with the ball at her feet, which suits the way England want to play, building out from the back. However, whether the talented 24-year-old, who has performed exceptionally well for Chelsea this season, will be able to match the stage presence, confidence and output of Earps on the biggest international stages remains to be seen.
Her international retirement comes as a shock, but it is understood to be something she has been considering and discussing with Wiegman for some time. The timing of the announcement, so soon before the European Championship, is unusual, and many would have liked to see the senior head steer England's young keepers through the tournament. The reasons for the decision and its timing will no doubt come out in time; what we can take some time to do now is appreciate and reflect on Earps's commitment, passion and energy in an England shirt.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
23 minutes ago
- BBC News
OpenAI and UK sign deal to use AI in public services
OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, has signed a deal to use artificial intelligence to increase productivity in the UK's public services, the government has agreement signed by the firm and the science department could give OpenAI access to government data and see its software used in education, defence, security, and the justice Secretary Peter Kyle said that "AI will be fundamental in driving change" in the UK and "driving economic growth".The Labour government's eager adoption of AI has previously been criticised by campaigners, such as musicians' who oppose its unlicensed use of their music. The text of the memorandum of understanding says the UK and OpenAI will "improve understanding of capabilities and security risks, and to mitigate those risks".It also says that the UK and OpenAI may develop an "information sharing programme", adding that they will "develop safeguards that protect the public and uphold democratic values".OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said the plan would "deliver prosperity for all"."AI is a core technology for nation building that will transform economies and deliver growth," he deal comes as the UK government looks for ways to improve the UK's stagnant economy, which is forecast to have grown at 0.1% to 0.2% for the April to June UK government has also made clear it is open to US AI investment, having struck similar deals with OpenAI's rivals Google and Anthropic earlier this said its OpenAI deal "could mean that world-changing AI tech is developed in the UK, driving discoveries that will deliver growth".Generative AI software like OpenAI's ChatGPT can produce text, images, videos, and music from prompts by technology does this based on data from books, photos, film footage, and songs, raising questions about potential copyright infringement or whether data has been used with technology has also come under fire for giving false information or bad advice based on prompts.
The Guardian
40 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘Robin Williams said: 'I'll buy the club!'': how The Comic Strip set the UK comedy scene ablaze
It was the moment comedy broke with sexism – yet it happened in a strip club. It was a fervour of free creative expression – yet it retained a commercial, careerist edge. It was one of the longest-running and most successful brands in UK comedy history – which few people could now recognise. At the Edinburgh fringe this summer, The Comic Strip Presents … will be memorialised in a series of film screenings and Q&As with its creator and prime mover Peter Richardson. Richardson was the impresario behind the legendary comedy club The Comic Strip, which opened in 1980. When he and his star performers – Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, French and Saunders among them – created Channel 4's The Comic Strip Presents … a couple of years later, he could legitimately claim to be the man who brought alternative comedy to television. This being a celebration of an iconic moment in UK comedy history, one might assume Edinburgh's Usher Hall or the 750-seat Pleasance Grand has been set aside to host. But one might assume wrong. 'When I started [showing these films] about a year ago,' Richardson tells me, 'we didn't have the money to advertise them. So we'd arrive at theatres that had about 30 people who had somehow read our minds that we were going to be there. And 30 people in a 300-seat cinema can be hard work.' The Comic Strip Presents … ran for three series on Channel 4 from 1982-1988, then it moved to the BBC in the early 90s before making a return to Channel 4 for one-off specials, the most recent in 2016. But it's not a big name in comedy – far less so than, for example, The Young Ones, the BBC sitcom starring some of the same talents and broadcast at the same time. 'It wasn't good television,' admits Richardson, 'because it wasn't repetitive, and television is about repeating a formula and people getting to know it well.' And was it even comedy? One of the show's stars, Mayall, argued that it shouldn't have been called The Comic Strip, and that 'Interesting Films' might have been a better fit. In fact, the series was – like Inside No 9 more recently – a tonally varying anthology show, a suite of standalone films united only by sensibility, and by the performers bringing them to the screen. 'I told Channel 4,' says Richardson, ''These performers are so good they don't need to be stuck playing one-dimensional characters. They can play all sorts. One week they can be a heavy metal band, the next week they can be The Famous Five.' You could call it bad television, because you're not seeing more of the same. But as it's gone on, it's become a collection of very memorable one-off moments and that's what people now remember.' The performers also included Adrian Edmondson, Nigel Planer and Richardson himself, with a rotating supporting cast that included Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane and more. At the time, they were setting the UK comedy scene ablaze. That all started at the Comedy Store, a strip club and the anarchic HQ of what had recently been called 'alternative comedy'. Richardson's coup was to cherrypick the most exciting voices of that generation, and cart them off to another strip club, a little less anarchic, a few blocks up the road: the Raymond Revuebar. Here, with the financial support of the Rocky Horror Picture Show producer Michael White, he opened The Comic Strip club – a name that seems obvious, although 'the New Depression Club' was, according to Edmondson, a very near miss. For a year from 1980-1981, the Comic Strip was the hippest and hottest comedy night in town. 'The bouncers at Raymond Revuebar had a simple rule of thumb for who was directed where,' Sayle later wrote. 'If they reeked of aftershave they were sent to the strip show; if they smelled of beer they came to us.' Celebs piled in: Bianca Jagger, Dustin Hoffman. Robin Williams came and demanded to perform, to impress his guest, David Bowie. Sayle offered him 15 minutes. Williams said: 'I told [Bowie] I'd do an hour'. Sayle: 'You can't.' Williams: 'I'll buy the club!' Sayle: 'We don't own it. It belongs to a bouffant-haired pornographer.' The buzz even reached the pages of the London Review of Books, whose critic noted, 'within seconds, [Sayle] has the audience agape. Most of them, it seemed, had never been called cunts before.' Then Channel 4 came calling, looking for cutting-edge talent to help launch the new broadcaster on to the country's airwaves. Richardson was given carte blanche. 'They said, 'What do you want to do?' and I said, 'I want to make six films, all different.'' The first, Five Go Mad in Dorset, was transmitted on the station's opening night, and the controversy around its satire of Enid Blyton attitudes gave that event a front-page news fillip. But Five Go Mad will not be celebrated at the fringe this summer, says Richardson. 'Taking the piss out of racism and sexism [in that way] is long gone,' he says. 'It's not a funny issue like it was when we did it in the 80s.' One option might have been to re-edit the episode – a course of action in which Richardson, now 73, has freely indulged as the Edinburgh shows have come together. Not for him a bask in the glory of his youthful success. 'What we've done,' he says, 'is revisited the films and said, '30 years later they need some adjustment.' Because things go faster now.' Western spoof Fistful of Travellers Cheques has been 'cut back a bit'. So too has late-period favourite Four Men in a Car. And a scene has been trimmed from The Strike, the show's faux Hollywood movie making mincemeat of the miners' strike. That one bagged a Golden Rose of Montreux comedy award, and starred Richardson (the only performer to appear in every episode) as Al Pacino playing, er, Arthur Scargill. 'I could do Pacino much better now,' he laughs, 'because I worked with John Sessions on Stella Street.' So now, he says, slipping into a convincing Italian-American accent, 'I can do Al.' Stella Street was another of Richardson's TV hits, undertaken when The Comic Strip Presents, by any measure his life's work, was in abeyance. Even when he was a jobbing comedian, in double act The Outer Limits with Nigel Planer, Richardson was a child of amateur film-makers and a wannabe film-maker himself. With The Comic Strip, he made movies for cinematic release: The Supergrass in 1985, and Eat the Rich two years later. Further TV specials included Red Nose of Courage, telling the tale of John Major's flight from the circus to parliament, and 2011's The Hunt for Tony Blair, imagining the ex-PM on the run having been accused of a series of murders. Both will be screened at the fringe, MC'd by comedian Robin Ince and with special guests including Sayle and Allen. Richardson is modest about the achievement of having brought these 30 years' worth of films to the screen. 'I always thought we were the new Ealing comedies. And [Ealing Studios at its peak] made about 150 films over 20 years, of which about 15 are remembered. So our strike rate isn't too bad. We made some flops, but at least one or two out of each series are really good.' Some, indeed, are carved on this writer's heart – notably Bad News Tour and More Bad News, the show's two-part heavy metal spoof, which predated This Is Spinal Tap and ended up with Edmondson, Mayall and co performing live on stage, under a hail of beer glasses, at the 1986 Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington. Richardson is at peace with the under-appreciation of The Comic Strip Presents, acknowledging that, as a bloody-minded sitcom refusenik way back when, he is the auteur of his own misfortune. He is delighted to be bringing the remastered films to Edinburgh, a city in which, back in the day, he and Planer once toured as a support act to Dexy's Midnight Runners. 'FrontmanKevin Rowland complained,' he says, 'that we didn't do new material at every performance.' Expect no new material at these screenings – but a new experience, perhaps. 'It's a great thing,' says Richardson, 'to show them in the cinema. You don't often get to share comedy television with an audience, and it changes the whole experience: people laughing around you. We've discovered that there is an audience around the country who want to see these films on the big screen and talk about them. It's fantastic that something we created 30 or 40 years ago is still creating laughter. I love it.' The Comic Strip Presents … is at the Fringe is on 2, 3, 8, 9 and 10 August at Just the Tonic, Edinburgh
Reuters
43 minutes ago
- Reuters
Rowland targets multiple titles after Formula E breakthrough
LONDON, July 21 (Reuters) - After 11 seasons that have produced 10 different champions, Formula E's new title-holder Oliver Rowland believes the all-electric series has become less of a lottery and he can break with the past. The Nissan driver, who clinched this year's crown in Berlin on July 13 with two races to spare, told reporters ahead of his home British season finale at London's ExCel this weekend that the championship was fairer now. "In the early years we had this qualifying system which was just mental, where the top six in the championship went out on a track that was one second slower than (for) the next group and then half a second slower than the next group," he said. "You could never pull away in the championship. You would basically get in the lead and then just start last in the next race." In 2021, the last year before the Season Eight change, 18 drivers remained in title contention heading into the final two rounds. Seven of the 11 championships, including the first three, have been decided in the final race. Only Frenchman Jean-Eric Vergne has so far managed to defend a Formula E crown, winning back-to-back titles in 2017-18 and 2018-19. The current qualifying splits drivers into two groups of 11 based on championship position, with odd numbers in one group and evens in the other, before the top four from each advance to knockout duels. "It's kind of much fairer and I think you have the opportunity to see people winning more back-to-back titles," said Rowland, 32. "I think it's a little bit fairer now in terms of not being as much of a lottery. I expect that you will see the same guys towards the front and more repeat winners moving forward," said Rowland. While this year's drivers' crown is won, Nissan are fighting Porsche for the team and manufacturers' titles. Rowland said his ambition for the future, without the pressure of chasing a first title, was to try to cement himself as one of the top drivers in the series. "It's a good motivation to have, to try and win three or four (titles)," he said.
