When Georgia Stanway was 15 and in need of some shooting practice, she drafted her mother into goalkeeping action. With no alternative available, Joanne Stanway pulled on a pair of gloves and positioned herself between the goalposts specially set up in the family’s back garden in Cumbria.
As a former athlete who had run for Great Britain at the youth Olympics, Joanne believed herself equal to the challenge but was soon shocked by the sheer velocity of her daughter’s shots from distance.
Before long Joanne admitted to “trying to dodge the ball rather than save it” and, by the next morning, complained of being “black and blue all over”.
In a very different context, Spain’s goalkeeper Sandra Paños experienced a similar sense of helplessness as Stanway’s 22-yard rocket of a shot scorched its way beyond her outstretched fingertips during Wednesday night’s Euro 2022 quarter-final at Brighton’s Amex Stadium.
Extra time was under way when the 23-year-old from Barrow-in-Furness ensured England came from behind to secure the 2-1 victory that sealed their place in Tuesday’s semi-final against Sweden or Belgium at Sheffield United’s Bramall Lane.
That goal will take a treasured place in an already extensive collection of game-changing finishes from an attacking midfielder recently signed by Bayern Munich and frequently described, in a term coined by Alan Partridge, as possessing a right foot “like a traction engine”.
As befits a teenager who idolised the Newcastle and England centre-forward Alan Shearer – Stanway’s family are big Newcastle fans – her early years in Blackburn’s academy were spent as a striker.
These days she is deployed as a box-to-box central midfielder for England but it was only after joining Manchester City as a 16-year-old that Stanway dropped deeper. Although her favourite role now is as a No 10 behind the centre-forward, that place in Wiegman’s team is occupied by Chelsea’s brilliant attacking playmaker Fran Kirby, forcing Stanway to operate slightly out of position in the heart of the Lionesses’ engine room.
It is proving no hardship for a player blessed with so much zip and zest that, watching her run at defenders, it is easy to imagine she is powered by some sort of internal clockwork motor. “Georgia’s got so much energy you just wind her up before a game and let her go like a wind-up toy,” the Manchester City manager, Gareth Taylor, once observed.
When representatives of Bayern Munich, one of the brightest lights in women’s football’s European firmament, scouted Stanway at City last season they could have been forgiven for doing double takes when Taylor circumvented an injury crisis by fielding his diminutive 5ft 4in “firefighter” in assorted outfield positions.
Typically Stanway nailed most of them, even impressing at right-back – well out of her comfort zone – while her City and England teammate Lucy Bronze recovered from knee surgery. “I’d play in goal if I had to,” Stanway joked.
The only concern, something which to a certain extent extends to her current England brief, was Stanway’s penchant for conceding too many fouls and occasionally launching herself into reckless tackles. “I do quite like the rough and tumble and I can be a bit nasty,” concedes a quintessentially selfless “team player” who grew up playing alongside boys on Barrow’s Strawberry Fields recreation ground.
Phil Neville, Wiegman’s predecessor as permanent England manager, believes that background served her well. “I told Georgia: ‘Pretend you’re in the park back in Cumbria playing with your friends and having fun,’” he says. “That’s when Georgia’s at her best.”
Stanway does not disagree. “I feel most at ease when I’m playing with a smile,” she says. “I’m happiest when the ball’s moving fluently and I’m playing with freedom, running at people and getting shots off.”
Growing up with three brothers, she also exhibited a talent for cricket as a child but abandoned it when spare time became increasingly devoured by training with Blackburn or making the four-hour round road trip to east Lancashire from Barrow in her parents’ car.
Manchester City’s former manager, Nick Cushing, the interim head coach at New York City men, signed Stanway after the then teenager scored 35 goals in 15 games for Blackburn’s senior side.
“Georgia’s work ethic was incredible and her hunger to create and score goals unrivalled,” says Cushing. “But she just loves playing football.”
Wednesday night’s winner, not to mention the lucrative move to Bayern, has made all the Stanway family’s sacrifices worthwhile. Still, success is unlikely to go to the head of a woman in a long-term relationship with the Toulouse rugby league full-back Olly Ashall-Bott.
When in England the couple share a home in Widnes, Cheshire, where, during lockdown, they became hooked on fishing. “On only our second time out, Georgia caught the biggest fish ever,” Ashall-Bott has said. “She’s so competitive in everything she does.”
There is, though, a more reflective, homely side to a midfielder who, despite having travelled extensively abroad, describes the Lake District as “my favourite place in the world” and likes nothing better than “pottering around at home”.
Indeed it is safe to assume her house is tidy. “I like tidying, I like cleaning, I like sorting out drawers,” says the woman responsible for eventually bringing order to England’s initially rather chaotic gameplan against Spain.
