Hurricane Hemp (Lauren Hemp interview)

Lauren Hemp had lit up the SheBelieves Cup in March and was chasing a WSL title and an Olympic place when lockdown arrived. What followed made her one of the few players whose personality reached a wider audience: the keepy-uppy toilet roll challenge, a 100km run for the Darby Rimmer MND Foundation, and the flat-as-a-pancake living-room sing-songs with her Manchester City flatmate Esme Morgan, which the pair stopped once they became popular enough to make them nervous. The nineteen-year-old is gracious about Chelsea’s points-per-game title, warm about learning from Steph Houghton and Jill Scott, and vivid on the two Wembley days that shaped her – the FA Cup final goal off the bench, and her first England appearance in front of a record crowd. She insists she is not the finished article.