I’m Aran Embleton, a former Lioness and FA Cup Finalist with Doncaster Belles. This is my journey from the North East to South Yorkshire and the international stage.
Aran was born in Cramlington, a small town 6 miles north of Newcastle, and that was where she began her footballing journey.
I started playing football in the school team at around the age of eight and I soon became captain even though the rest of the team were all boys. Luckily most of the lads I was playing with went on to play for big clubs, so I was playing at a high level growing up.
It got to the age though, where the FA regulations stated that girls couldn’t play with boys anymore due to physicality. So the school caretaker, who used to stand and watch us playing football at break times, said, “There’s no way I can watch this lass not play again after this.” So, he took it upon himself to go and find a women’s team.
He came back and said, “I need to speak to your mum because we’ve found you a girls’ team.” My mom agreed that I could go to Thursday night training. I was 10 at that point. I went, and it was a bit rough in Cowgate, Newcastle. On the bus, it was a bit of a madhouse; you can imagine, with it being a rough area, there were motorbikes flying around, and I thought, “Oh my God, where am I?”
I went to training, or so I thought. They actually had a game that night. I remember walking onto the field and thinking, “Oh, there’s a game on.” That was the training I was meant to be at. When I approached the two coaches, one of which was Su Cumming, who is now the director of Newcastle United Women, she said, “Oh, it’s great to have you along. We’re hopefully going to get you involved.” At that point, signing on with the FA wasn’t as big a thing as it is now.
They decided to put me on for the last 15 minutes of the game, and I scored a hat-trick! I was tiny, very skinny, easily pushed off the ball, but I was really skilful, which worked in my favour. That was it and it kind of went from there.
I played for that club for about eight years. We were in the Championship but struggled to get promotion, often coming second, third, or fourth. Newcastle Women at that point were in much lower leagues, so we were the top team in the North East at the time. I was named young player of the year for the league, which was awarded by Hope Powell, so at the age of 14, a lot of people in the North East were talking about me.
A manager from a totally different club, off her own back, contacted the Lionesses manager at the time, Ted Copeland, to say there was somebody up here he needed to come and take a look at, but I was still very young at 14 years old.
I played in a Coca-Cola tournament at an old ground that used to be the ex-headquarters for the police in Northumberland. It had multiple football pitches and was sometimes used for festivals and tournaments. I remember my dad coming up to me at the tournament to say, “The England manager’s been to watch you!” I was like, “Really?” I asked what he said, and my dad said, “Well, I don’t know.” He was just standing on his own over there, and that was it.
Fast forward about three weeks, and I received a letter in the post from the FA headquarters, stating that I was called up to the training camp. As a youngster at 14, there was Jillian Coulthard, who had around 140 caps, Karen Walker, top goal scorer in the top flight at the time for Doncaster Belles – they were all double my age.
I travelled down on the train and my brother, who lived in London, met me at King’s Cross, took me across London, and got me to where we were training. I met up with the girls, and as a young kid, you’re star-struck. I was like, “Oh my God, these are people I’ve read a lot about and heard the names splashed about.”
As a woman’s footballer, I tried my best to keep an eye on international football, but it wasn’t like it is now, where it’s on TV. But I knew the names because we naturally were in the Championship, and I kept hearing the names.
I was in the setup from then on and they slowly eased me in as I got older. I made my debut at 17 at Kenilworth Road, the home of Luton Town, against Spain. Not long after that, the FA decided they were going to start England Women’s Under-18s. There was no other age group other than the senior side, so I was playing for both.
At the same time, the FA decided they would start the first-ever women’s academy in the country.
They had both men’s and women’s, and I went on a scholarship. I was full-time, doing a Travel and Tourism course as well as playing football four or five hours a day.
Hope Powell, head of development, used to come and check in on us because it was used to feed into the senior squad, which I was already in. I had a meeting with Hope regarding my club situation. At that point, Sunderland came into the Kestrels, threw us the money, and we had no choice really at that point.
A lot of the girls were Newcastle supporters, but it came down to whether we were still going to have a club or not. So, we moved to Sunderland, but again, still in the championship. That was then becoming a problem for me internationally. So, Hope Powell came up, and she had a conversation with me, saying I needed to play in the top flight.
So, I left Sunderland and joined Doncaster Belles. Doncaster Belles were the only team I would have gone to because of how loyal I am. I’m quite particular about things that are close to my heart. My grandma grew up in Castleford, so there was only one other team I was ever going to go to, and that was Doncaster Belles, one of the most successful clubs in all-time history in women’s football.
At that point, my career really flourished because I was playing with pretty much half an international team. It was us and Arsenal dominating the league, and the majority of the Lionesses back then were made from those two teams. I continued to be in the England squad, but I was on the bench most of the time. So even though I ended up with four caps for the Lionesses, I was involved for many, many years, sometimes just not getting on the pitch.
As for my four years with the Belles, they were a very happy four years. It was a lot of travelling though. I’ve spent my life on the road, from Loughborough to Doncaster, which I was doing three times a week as I didn’t move to Doncaster.
Within that time, women’s football went semi-professional for a short space of time, but the funders were really struggling at Doncaster Belles. I think it was only really Arsenal who had the money, and we struggled as a club.
They found it difficult to find funding to take us any further than semi-professional at the time. There wasn’t a lot of corporate coming in to throw money at it either. It was very hard.
There were people in the background trying to ring and get sponsorship wherever they could, backpacking that type of stuff, because we just didn’t have the money. No company at that point saw any benefit of sponsoring a women’s team because there wasn’t a lot on TV for it.
It’s a totally different ball game nowadays.
While it was a happy four years, the beginning for me as a 17-year-old was hard. I knew a lot of the squad from the Lionesses, don’t get me wrong, but again, it’s a new team, a new place.
I would say the first six months were a bit daunting, but it just became normality. I adapted to the travelling, got to know my teammates. I looked up to a lot of them because they all had huge amounts of caps, many of them with over 100, so they were mentors to us really.
The likes of Karen Walker took me under her wing, and would guide me. I learned a lot on the pitch. I was terrible, and I still am now, even in life in general, at analysing everything, so I analysed my own games a lot.
I was learning off them every single training session, whether that be verbally or watching them in training. Because I was very much a forward player, I liked to dribble with the ball at my feet, I tried to make things happen a lot, my defending wasn’t always my strong point. I was lucky to have some of the best defenders around to learn from.
One of the highlights was my run with the team to the 2000 FA Cup Final. We played against Arsenal in the semi-final, which was live on Sky Sports. Arsenal that year, they won the League so they were odds-on favourites. They had a phenomenal team; the likes of Rachel Yankey and Marieanne Spacey, the list goes on. But to be fair we had a very strong team.
I was playing on the left wing for that game and managed to assist the winning goal. We won 3-2 in the end and went through to play Charlton in the final, who were a decent team at the time, not far behind the two of us in general league terms.
On the day, they were just better, but ultimately it was a great experience. The crowd isn’t like it is now; I think we got about 5,000 at the game. But generally, it was a great experience.
I learned probably the most in those four years with that club. I had an exceptional manager, Julie Chipchase, who unfortunately is no longer with us. But she was phenomenal; she was at the top of her game, involved with the FA at England level, as well as managing Doncaster. Looking back now, that was all voluntary.
She was running a top flight team voluntarily, which effectively meant we were paying to play ourselves. We paid ourselves until we managed to just go semi-pro, and even that didn’t cover my fuel costs and my dad driving, because he used to take us everywhere.
Aran explained why she left the Belles after four years and took a break from the game.
All my life, from a very young age, all I did was play football nonstop. I never had a social life at all, it was zero. I came away from football for that reason. I was going through a hard time. I had issues going on at home and so I think overall, I sort of stepped back from football completely for my own mental health.
Post football, Aran moved on to provide commentary for Newcastle United Women games and is looking to forge a path in the media world. She explained how this opportunity arose.
I did a talk with Newcastle United Women, going through my career, the hardships of what women’s football looked like in my time in the early 2000s, compared to now. Off the back of that, they then said they were looking to start live streaming the women’s games.
I said I would love to get involved in that because my dad recorded every game I played back then, and that was how I analysed my performances, so I felt I knew how to analyse games.
They asked for a main commentator and I said, “I’ll have a go.” It went really well, they were getting 40,000 views across NUFC TV and YouTube platforms, and all of a sudden it went a bit crazy all over the world – America, Australia, you name it.
When Newcastle Women got into their cup final last year, and I went down to support them at Luton, some of the people who listened to us on the commentary had flown in from America, which was crazy.
They came up to us, wanted to speak with us, have photos, and told us they had a community in America that got together to watch the games.
I wanted it to be a success, and it worked great. It’s now just grown and grown with more listeners.
I’ve done talkSPORT and BBC Radio in Newcastle when the Lionesses were at St. James’ Park. For me though because my profile isn’t as well known, I’ve found it harder to break in to the punditry game. The current Lionesses who are retiring, like Jill Scott, a lot of your ex-players who are retiring, fall straight into that bracket with a platform to be able to go straight onto media.
I push through though, and I get a lot of people coming to do interviews and radio, but when it comes to actual punditry, I find it very difficult to break down doors.
Aran also received her Lionesses Legacy cap in 2023 from Alex Greenwood at St Georges Park.
It was an honour to go and receive it. It was nice to be able to know that I’ve got a number in history, and that’s never going to be forgotten. So yeah, it was brilliant. And it was the right time. At the end of the day, the men have their legacy numbers and have had them for a long time.
So when the FA came out to say that’s what they were going to be doing, I thought it was nice for everyone, and at least now if anyone gets their first cap for the Lionesses, at least they’re always going to have a legacy number.
You can read more about South Yorkshires current crop of Lionesses here – On the international stage: South Yorkshire’s Lionesses – SYWF
