‘She used to come home with cuts on her legs from bouncing off the cage floor but she’d still go back the next day.’ Getting hit by the big boys with the ball, she used to get up and get up and that’s made her such a tough footballer. She’s kicked a ball since she could walk. ‘Growing up here, everyone used to go out playing. George's flag as she exited the car outside her family home in West London The 24-year-old star was pictured proudly wrapped in the St. Bursting with pride, she added: ‘She was tough as old boots and just bounced off of everybody. ‘She always had a ball at her feet,’ said the mother-of-seven, 55, who stayed at home to care for her children while her husband Noel, 58, worked as a machinery engineer. No one knows this better than her mother Jane, who yesterday spoke to the Daily Mail at the family’s terraced home about the brilliant daughter she used to take to training on the bus. The nickname of that childhood haunt provides a perfect metaphor for the brave-hearted Lioness who went on to score the fairytale goal that clinched victory in the Euros for England.įor while, overnight, Miss Kelly has become a national hero, to get to the dizzying heights of her game this sporting superstar first had to claw her way out from the rusting metal football pens next to her family’s home on the Windmill Park Estate in Southall.

It was the rough, gravel-floored fenced-in pitches where she and her five brothers and their friends kicked the ball about from dawn until dusk. Hero goal scorer Chloe Kelly hugged her family as she returned home to Ealing today following the Lionesses historic Euro 2022 win - as her mother said she was always 'tough as old boots' and 'bounced off of everybody'.Īs a football-mad youngster, the 24-year-old was determined to show the boys on her West London estate not just that she was as good as they were but that she was even better.Įvery day after school and in the holidays, she spent hours at what was known locally as ‘the cage’.

Vintage scene bouncing on red ball