Fran Kirby out to Make Her Late Mum Proud as Breakout Player for England

Her first World Cup goal in her first World Cup start was special enough: Fran Kirby wrapped around one defender, then beat another, and poked the ball off the post and into the net. It was a brilliant finish from the 21-year-old forward, one of two England goals in a 2-1 win over Mexico on Saturday.

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"I don't think anything can ever top that apart from a winner's medal around my neck," Kirby told BBC London 94.9 after the match.

Scoring in a Women's World Cup was once so far away from Kirby. When she was 17, Kirby wasn't even playing. She had quit the game altogether after her mother Denise died of a sudden brain haemorrhage. Severe depression kept her from "getting out of bed, getting dressed, eating," writes Anna Kessel in the Guardian. Kirby even turned down a scholarship from an American school, according to the newspaper.

In a split second, without warning, her mother was gone, and football lost all its importance.

Perhaps it was her mother's association with the game that Kirby could not bear. The two were "really close," Kirby told the Guardian. Denise went to see Fran play every game, and she would push her daughter to give everything to the sport.

"If it was raining and I didn’t want to go," Kirby recalls, "she’d say: 'Get in the car!' She talked about me making it all the way."

To get to this point, to achieve her dream of playing in a Women's World Cup, Kirby had to start from the bottom all over again. She joined a Sunday league and freed herself on the pitch. "I loved not having the pressure," Kirby told the Guardian. "I loved being able to just play."

It was just like it had been when she started as a seven-year-old: all for the fun of the game.

Her father Steve did his best to support his daughter and assume the role of mom and dad. He changed his working hours and watched her games. Kirby resumed her career with Reading, where it all began as a kid, and scored 32 times in 21 appearances in 2012. The goals came back, and so did the passion. An England call-up soon followed, and Kirby became the first player from the second division of the FA Women's Soccer League to play for her country.

Dad and brother Jamie were there in Moncton, N.B., on Saturday to witness the culmination of her comeback story, that opening goal for England. They are set to watch the final Group F match against Colombia on Wednesday. A win would guarantee a spot in the knockout round, where England have not managed a single win.

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"Whether they stay longer will depend on whether dad can get any more time off work," Kirby told the Daily Mail. "But I’m sure if he tells work, 'My daughter’s just got to the knockout stages of the World Cup', they might bat an eyelid and see if he can have some extra time.'"

She enjoys playing under the pressure in football again—"that’s one thing I relish, the pressure of having to try and beat the best teams in the world," she told the Daily Mail—but Kirby still does everything with her mother in her memory. She wants to make her proud.

And who knows, maybe on that first goal, Denise was there for her daughter one more time.

"It was funny, in the changing room just now," Kirby told BBC London 94.9, "my roommate Alex Greenwood said, ‘That was your mum there when it hit the post, she was there on the line to tap it in for you to make sure it went in.'"