'I am the first mum to get Wrexham semi-pro contract - I want to celebrate that'
Nansi Jones’ Wrexham shirt is, typically, three times too big for her.
From where her mum, Phoebe Davies, sits, the size is perfect. When the 27-year-old Wrexham defender faces Swansea on Sunday, she can shove as many layers under the club top to keep her daughter, Nansi, as warm as humanly possible as she seeks revenge for what she and her teammates consider unfinished business from opening day.
These are the small adjustments to life that being a mum and a footballer demand. The brain operates on two wavelengths simultaneously: on the pitch and hovering above a soon-to-be three-year-old.
Davies is Wrexham Women’s first-ever and only semi-professionally contracted footballer and mum. The fact is a fun inclusion at the bottom of the right-back’s profile on the club’s website (along with the fact she featured in both Merseyside academies).
It’s also a fact that Davies, head of regional marketing for a home developer in Cheshire when not wearing her Wrexham strip, believes warrants recognition. “I’m playing football at the highest level I’ve ever played at. I’m also a mum. I think that’s more than worthy of celebration,” Davies says.
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The temptation upon hearing the words ‘mum’ and ‘football’ thrust together, Davies says, is to imagine an over-animated woman on the touchline screeching uninhibitedly about her child’s supposed prodigious talent (11/10 of these aren’t prodigious).
“That’s the default. Not that you’re a mum playing football, doing both.”
The reality isn’t so much a stigma as much as it’s a default. Despite the exponential growth of women’s profile and allure, the topics of motherhood and pregnancy remain almost taboo throughout the game, regardless of the level, with clubs offering bespoke plans for phased and flexible returns largely the exception to the rule.
In 2017 a survey of more than 3,000 female players by FIFPRO, the players' union, found that only 2 per cent were mothers. Around 45 per cent said that they planned to retire early in order to have a family. Wages for players outside elite clubs remain low; for those without full-time contracts or operating at below professional levels like Davies, the possibility of having children almost effectively means placing football on the proverbial shelf as motherhood and a full-time job take precedence.
There is also what Davies charmingly coins ‘mum-guilt’, or the sensation that one’s footballing exploits are now, suddenly, selfish given the arrival of a totally dependent small human.
WREXHAM, WALES - 26th MARCH 2023 - Wrexham's Phoebe Davies during Wrexham AFC Women vs Connah's Quay Nomads in the final game of the Genero Adran North at The Racecourse Ground, Wrexham (Pic by Sam Eaden/FAW) (Pic by Sam Eaden/FAW)“When I was pregnant, I had every intention of returning to the pitch after a couple of months,” Davies explains.
“It didn’t cross my mind that this would change. I knew it would take some time to get back physically, but when you have a child, everything changes. Your outlook changes, how you prioritise your time changes.”
Chelsea manager Emma Hayes owed her decision to become the new U.S. Women’s National team head coach to a similar feeling in regards to her five-year-old son, Harry. Hayes had never picked Harry up from school, or brought him to an extracurricular activity. Ice cream dates were pre-planned weeks in advance. That version of motherhood eventually begins to chafe.
Motherhood and a full-time job were both considerations as Davies pondered putting pen to paper with a semi-professional contract with the club. “I wish it was as easy as ‘yes, I’ll do that’, but it’s not. I had to make sure I was supported so I could continue what I love.”
Davies, who was enticed to return to Wrexham at the start of the 2022/23 season by club boss Steve Dale who worked with her during their time in Liverpool ’s academy, found support from the club, along with her friends and family.
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The support has paid off. Despite suffering an injury in the early months after her move to Wrexham, Davies helped the club in their promotion push, featuring in the play-off against Briton Ferry and denying the Adran South winners a dramatic late equaliser with a clearance off the line in injury time.
The intervention was fitting. Davies, along with Rebecca Pritchard (who supplied the play-off's game-winner) and keeper Del Morgan are the only three players to feature in the previous Wrexham Ladies team that was eventually forced to fold due financial issues, only to re-emerge some years later under the current guise.
The urge arrives to paint Davies’ defensive act as a metaphorical redemption for the forced closure of the original team, a Hollywood script. Davies is less dramatic.
“I get asked a lot about then to now, the differences, the return,” she says. “But it doesn’t feel like I’ve returned or come back or whatever. It’s two different lives.
“Then, we were so distant from the rest of the club, not just inside the club but outside it as well. I was 19-years-old, it felt like a hobby with friends on a Sunday.
“Now, we have analysis every week. Three training sessions. Games on Sunday. It’s an entirely different world. They’re impossible to compare.”
Asked whether she noticed signs that the original team might be forced to be abandoned, Davies is candid. “I was a teenager. Looking into the future, I wasn’t doing that. Whether that was bad, I don’t know. But I didn’t see anything, but that might be because I wasn’t looking that far ahead.”
WREXHAM, WALES - 26th MARCH 2023 - Wrexham's Phoebe Davies gives away a foul during Wrexham AFC Women vs Connah's Quay Nomads in the final game of the Genero Adran North at The Racecourse Ground, Wrexham (Pic by Sam Eaden/FAW) (Pic by Sam Eaden/FAW)The status of women’s football less than 10 years ago in Wales also played a factor. In 2015, when Davies reached the semi-finals of the Women’s FAW Cup (losing 1-4 to Cardiff City), the national team was mostly semi-professional players. League attendances struggled to amass triple digits, facilities and support from clubs was marginal and coverage was minimal, if not altogether absent.
This season, Wrexham Women have consistently attracted crowds of over 500 to their home matches. Players are recognised at petrol stations and in shop aisles. Matches are streamed to thousands around the world.
Perhaps it speaks to the degree of change possible in such a truncated period of time: Davies’ own evolution into a mature, semi-professional footballing mother in sync with the evolution of women’s football in Wales.
Not that the larger metaphysical parallels of herself and her club keep her occupied at night. A soon-to-be three-year-old is more than capable of doing that, plus a full-time job and the need to keep Wrexham within touching distance of league leaders Cardiff.
Sunday’s clash with Swansea presents the biggest challenge for the latter. Wrexham, who sit second in the table, shocked the league and potentially even themselves as they reduced the six-time league winners to needing a last-gasp deflected strike to salvage a point in a 3-3 draw.
“On reflection we were disappointed not to come away with more,” Davies says. “People assumed we would struggle. But we proved what we’re capable of with that game, and we’ve continued to do so.”
Davies is keeping ambitions high: a top-four finish, a good FAW Cup run.
Whether or not the goals are achieved, Nansi will be there. Described as “all or nothing”, Nansi has already made her Welcome to Wrexham debut in season 2 (“I’ve recorded it to show her when she’s older,” Davies says). During the pre-season photoshoot, Nansi commanded the cameras like a professional. For now, she remains on the touchline cheering for her mum, a special occurrence that might just rival standing on the top of a double-decker bus with Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds.
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