The She Kicks Locker Room: Captain’s Chat with Lucy Staniforth

Sunderland’s captain returned to the club where her career began at sixteen and took the armband when a long-serving predecessor retired. She resists being typed: high standards, leading by example away from football as much as on the pitch, vocal when it helps, and always working hard. She keeps team talks short and calm, offering a piece of information that will keep people switched on rather than a speech, and motivates by recalling something a particular player once did well. Match-day responsibility is shared with two team mates, which she says makes it easier. The lesson she names as the biggest is that trying to become a different person as captain does not work, because people see through it – and that you cannot please everyone anyway.