'You are a number - that human touch wasn't there with England'

The big interview Steph Houghton The ex-Lionesses captain on the quest for parity, struggling under Sarina Wiegman and her husband's battle with motor neurone disease

- Donald McRae

There were times when I thought: 'I don't want to do this any more,'

Steph Houghton says as she remembers the hard years when she led the struggle to gain some parity for women in the unequal world of English football. Houghton won 121 caps for England, and captained her country from 2014 to 2021, but her most significant achievements happened far from the pitch. With a small group of fellow players she went into battle with male executives, managers, administrators and sponsors who showed an often demeaning attitude towards women's football.

The 36-year-old Houghton looks up, her gaze full of the fire she felt when it was difficult to make a lasting breakthrough. "I'd come in from training, having sacrificed time with my husband for a meeting, and take a call and feel deflated. You'd be like: 'What is the point in this?' But that's why you need a group around you; when you do get pissed off, that's when someone else steps up. There were a number of people who had a big influence on the changes we made."

Houghton is deep into an hour-long conversation in which she opens up about caring for her husband, the former Bradford City footballer Stephen Darby, whom she married in June 2018, three months before he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. She also reflects on the painful end to her career and her belief that she was treated poorly by Sarina Wiegman. "When you've come from nothing and you don't expect anything, to go into meetings with people that are very experienced is a difficult job," Houghton writes in her autobiography which charts her early life in the north east before documenting her crucial role in helping to change perceptions of women's football. "The FA [Football Association] had so much control over our money and income we couldn't go: 'Just fucking give us more money', even though it was really tempting to do that because it was ridiculous what the lads were getting compared to us."