A Watford and Wales legend, Helen Ward (née Lander) began and ended her 22-year playing career with the Golden Girls while becoming an international caps centurion and for 11 years the record goalscorer for the country she served so well on the world stage.
The prolific striker had a phenomenal goal return of 161 in 199 appearances for the Golden Girls, those hugely impressive statistics recorded on a giant mural in honour of her at Watford FC’s Vicarage Road stadium.
The two lengthy spells that Ward spent as a Golden Girl, the first largely in the FA Women’s Premier League and the second in the re-branded National League, bookended the formative years of the Women’s Super League in which she played for Arsenal, Chelsea and Reading.
She represented Wales for 15 years following her 2008 debut, winning 105 caps and scoring 44 goals. And while wracking up records at club and international level, she also gave birth to and brought up two children - a balancing act with motherhood and football that she carried out with aplomb.
Interviewed by the BBC ahead of the final game of her career, the 2022/23 National League play-off which Watford were to win and gain promotion to the second tier of the women’s pyramid, Ward said: “I met my husband through football and we’ve got two beautiful kids. So it’s literally given me my world, some of my best memories and my best friends.
“It’s taught me how to be a good person, a good team-mate, to work hard for success and how to deal with disappointment and setbacks.” That ethos was Ward’s throughout her playing days, right from the point of making her senior debut for Watford as a 15-year-old in the South East Combination League.
Two years after that start she spearheaded her team’s 2003 promotion to the FAWPL, and three seasons later her 40 Southern Division goals played a massive part in the Golden Girls’ promotion to the top flight while also earning herself - for a second successive season - the division’s top goalscorer award.
As she looked back some years later to that 2006/07 campaign, Ward said: “It’s still one of my very favourite seasons. I was still young, playing for the club I'd always played for, and football was starting to become a little bit more serious for me.
“Everything just seemed to go right for us and I can still picture us lifting the trophy at Sun Postal FC where we played our home games back then.
“We also went to Wembley at the end of that season for the first Wembley five-a-side competition, and we won that as well so it was a really enjoyable and memorable season.”
Ward also made her international debut in 2007, though it was for the England Under-23 team rather than Wales. She quickly switched her allegiance, however.
She reflected: “I’d made a bit of a name for myself as a goalscorer, but the England squad had a big club bias then and I felt I got a call-up because they thought they had to.
“So I went along, but I didn’t ever feel at home. No one’s to blame for that, but I just didn’t feel it was for me. And then Carl Lingham, who was my assistant coach at Watford and also assistant for Wales, asked if I’d got Welsh grandparents - which I had - and would I be interested in playing for Wales.
“I decided to give it a go, and it’s the best thing I ever did. From the moment I stepped into that environment I felt at home, and I had 15 years of incredible times with the team.”
There were incredible times for Ward almost immediately after making her Wales debut in September 2008. Four months later she left Watford for Arsenal and, by the end of May 2009, she had helped the Gunners to win the treble of Premier League, League Cup and FA Cup.
Recalling the transfer and its aftermath, she said: “I’d had some interest from Chelsea, which didn’t excite me too much, and from Leeds which was really left field in those days - hardly anybody moved location to change clubs, and I wasn’t going to go up to Leeds twice a week for training and to play on weekends.
“Then suddenly I got a call from Arsenal and I was like, ‘Oh well, that changes it a bit.’ It wasn't an easy decision, because I was so happy at Watford, but when the best team in the country - and arguably in Europe at that point - were after you, you kind of think, ‘well, if I don't do this, I'm going to regret it.’
“That was my first paid contract. I’d still been paying to play for Watford, like players at most women’s clubs all over the country, but it’s amazing when you think this was only a year before the the start of the Super League.
“So it was a big shift. There was more pressure and expectation, and it was daunting going into a squad with players like Kelly Smith, Karen Carney and national team captains like Faye White and Jayne Ludlow - although luckily I knew Jayne by then through playing for Wales and that helped integrate me into the group.
“But I was very much aware that I was now a little fish in a big pond, as opposed to being more of a big fish at Watford. But the girls were great and I played a good number of minutes that season - including playing in my first FA Cup final.
“I probably would say though, that I never did myself justice as an Arsenal player. I felt a bit of an imposter, which is a shame, and that’s nobody's fault but my own. But there's no regrets. I learned an awful lot, I had a really good time and I was lucky enough to win a few trophies.”
Come the start of the WSL and, now a Chelsea player, Ward grabbed a bit of history as the first player to touch the ball in the competition as she kicked off the league’s opening match against her former club Arsenal - who won the game 1-0.
Three years with Chelsea were followed by four at Reading, the first season of which was started with the non-involvement of Ward as she was pregnant with her first child Emily.
And during the last of those four seasons, 2016/17, second child Charlie was conceived ahead of the proud mum’s return to Watford. “When I came back to the club,” remembered Ward, “I think that in my signing-on pictures I was very close to nine months pregnant, and so they're not my most flattering of pictures!”
In the final six years of her playing days Ward combined motherhood with Watford’s yo-yoing existence as they suffered two relegations but earned two promotions, the second arriving as the now 37-year-old striker hung up her boots at the end of the 2022/23 campaign.
“The day-to-day logistics of making sure somebody was able to look after the kids while you were training or playing wasn’t easy,” she said. “Both times I had a kid, I had no contract. Maternity pay and policies were eventually brought into the women’s game, which was fantastic, but thankfully for me back then my parents and husband Matt were ultra-supportive.
“And it was such a reward to have your kids on the side of the pitch to watch you play and grow up in a world where they've got so many female role models to look up to - and not just Emily but my boy Charlie as well.
“Having kids during my career was actually one of the best things I could have done - I probably wouldn't have gone on playing till I was 37 before I retired if I hadn't had them.”
Retirement came at the end of a rollercoaster campaign for Watford, who clinched the Southern Premier Division title on the final day of what had been a season-long three-team tussle for the top and a place in the promotion play-off - in which they beat Northern Premier Division champions Nottingham Forest and stepped up to WSL2.
For Ward, it was the perfect end to her playing career. “My final act as a footballer was to lift the play-off trophy, which was really special,” she said. “It was always a bit of an emotional roller coaster with Watford, one way or the other, but thankfully that one ended on a big high.”
So her playing days were ended, but not her attachment to the club - a month or so after the play-off match she was appointed General Manager, that post then being expanded for Ward to become Head of Women’s Football.
“Doing that kind of job wasn’t really something I’d looked at,” she said, “but when it was offered to me I thought, ‘I know the club, I know the people, maybe I can try and have a positive impact.’
“And I was lucky to get a fantastic group of staff and players who knew that I would only ever do what I think is right and in the best interests of the club - my club.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Images thanks to Helen Ward, The FA/Action Images/John Sibley and Barrington Coombs - The FA/The FA via Getty Images.
