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Mary Earps has opened up about her mental health difficulties after she was dropped from the England squad in 2020 by then-manager Phil Neville.
The former England goalkeeper has gone into detail about her 53-cap career in her latest book All In: Football, Life and Learning to be Unapologetically Me (Bonnier Books, £22), with extracts serialised in The Guardian, six months after retiring from the international set-up.
In the latest extract, she reveals with raw honesty how, in 2020, her structures unravelled around her when she was left out of Phil Neville's England squad on the eve of the Covid lockdown.
She writes: 'I wasn’t drinking myself into oblivion but for someone who usually didn’t touch it at all, it felt too much and completely out of hand.
'I’d never drunk like that in my life, but for now it was the perfect way of numbing, of not feeling, and that, I decided, was what I needed above all else.'
The WSL season was put on pause in March 2020 and cancelled two months later.
In the latest extract, she reveals with raw honesty how, in 2020, her structures unravelled around her when she was left out of Phil Neville's England squad on the eve of lockdown
Earps' manager at Manchester United at the time, Casey Stoney, described in 2023 how the goalkeeper had been 'hurt deeply' when she was left out of Neville's squad
Earps' manager at Manchester United at the time, Casey Stoney, described in 2023 how the goalkeeper had been 'hurt deeply' when she was left out of Neville's squad.
After making her England debut under Mark Sampson in 2017, Earps travelled to the 2019 World Cup in France as Neville’s third-choice goalkeeper before being dropped completely.
The Guardian extract continues: 'I was piling on pounds and annihilating my fitness, and that old body-consciousness about being big and bulky was back with an angry vengeance, so I stopped eating as much.
'Not eating was also getting me drunk and therefore numbing my feelings quicker. For two weeks straight I ate nothing but soup, drank Echo Falls at night, and continued trashing my body and my self-confidence.
'For the first time in my life, I wondered if there was any point in me being here any longer. I don’t believe I was ever going to end it all but I thought, too many times, about how I could.'
For confidential support, call Samaritans on 116 123, visit samaritans.org or go to www.thecalmzone.net/get-support
