Karen ‘Kaz’ Walker became one of England’s all-time great strikers, hitting a then record 40 goals in 83 international appearances and a mass of goals for Doncaster Belles before and into the first decade of the Women’s Premier League. 

Yet when she first walked into the Donny fold as a 15-year-old in 1984, she “didn’t have a clue” what position she was going to play in if she was going to be deemed good enough to represent the mighty Belles, the country’s top club team of the day.

“I’d never played an 11-a-side game before I rocked up at Belles,” explains Walker as she looks back to the start of her stellar career. “I was the only girl in my school who played football and I wasn’t allowed to play in the boys team. I played five-a-side at the youth club, but I didn’t know what position I could play in for a full team, I didn’t have a clue.”

It was a year later that Walker made her Donny debut, this after choosing to play football rather than pursuing a highly promising basketball career. “I was playing basketball for Yorkshire,” she recalls, “and I was being looked at for England trials. But at that point I was told to make a decision, basketball or football, and I enjoyed football more so that’s the way I went.”

The way that Walker went proved a good choice - once she knew in what position she was going to be deployed. “I got into the team when (England striker) Lorraine Hanson got pregnant and they put me in her place. And that was it. I was 16 at the time, and a year-and-a-half later I was playing for England. It was nuts!”

Nuts or not, Walker had already established a big reputation ahead of the WFA National League’s formation in 1991. And she took to the country’s first nationwide league for women like the proverbial duck to water as the Belles won the Premier Division with a 100 per cent record.

Walker hit 36 goals in the 14-match league season while also, incredibly, hitting a hat-trick in every round of the FA Cup to help her team to a first season WFA League and FA Cup double. It was just an incredible season for me and the team,” she says. “It was definitely the most memorable season of my career.”

“Before the start of the National League we’d been playing local teams in regional leagues and winning games 10-0 and 15-0, which was no good for anybody. We needed to play against bigger and better teams, so we went into that first National League season so excited at being able to do just that. 

“You could feel it was different. We were having to work a lot harder for most of the wins, even though we ended up winning every league game. I was still very young but very confident, a bit cocky even, but I’d always scored goals and just knew I’d be able to carry on doing it.”

And carry on doing it she did, though after chalking up another League and FA Cup double in 1993/94 the Belles were to go trophy-less as clubs such as Arsenal, Croydon and Everton vied to take over as the League’s acknowledged top team.

Donny never finished below third in the table until 2003-04, when their fall to fifth place coincided with Walkers’s departure for Leeds United. In the meanwhile they lost out to Croydon on goal difference in 1995-96 and to the same team by a single point in 1999-2000.

“It was frustrating to finish second or third over so many years,” she says, “and especially in the two seasons Croydon pipped us. But I always said no matter what the margin was come the end of the season, the best team won the league.”

From the Belles team she had been part of for two decades, Walker switched to Leeds and so was re-united with former Donny manager Julie ‘Chippy’ Chipchase. “I was really good friends with Chippy,” Walker explains, “loved her to bits.

“At that point I’d thought about retiring, but Chippy asked me to join her and you know what, it was a new challenge for me for a couple of years, a new lease of life, and I loved it.

And what was not to love about Walker’s start to her time at Leeds? She hit 13 goals in her first 10 games, going on to help her team have mid-table finishes in both of the seasons she turned out for them and also to reach the 2006 FA Cup final.

In what was the penultimate match of her career, the Cup final was lost 5-0 to Arsenal. And in her last game, 2005-06’s final league fixture, Leeds suffered a 2-1 defeat at Everton. But United’s goal was scored by Walker, so she finished her playing days as she had started them.  

“I always wanted to score goals,” she says. “Even when we were winning, if I wasn’t scoring I wasn’t happy. So it was good to finish with a goal, and I enjoyed those last couple of seasons without pressures like trying to stand out because you wanted to get picked for England. 

"It was stuff like that that made me decide to retire, because it takes its toll. You turned up at a game every week, everyone knows you’re an England striker and everyone want to kill you. I actually knew at the start of that last season that I was going to retire at the end of it. My body had had enough, I was ready.” 

KAZ CONFIDENT - BUT NOT NERVELESS  

It’s hard to believe, but Walker - the most feared striker of her generation - was as nervous on occasions as she was confident in her goalscoring pomp.

“I was always the most nervous player in the squad,” she reckons as she remembers in particular one season and one amazing feat.

The season was 1991-92, the WFA National League’s inaugural campaign in which Donny did the League and FA Cup double with Walker hitting an incredible and unprecedented hat-trick in every round as she powered her team to their Cup final triumph.

“I never really kept a count of the goals I scored,” she says. “Somebody told me I’d got a hat-trick in every round and said, ‘Do you realise this has never been done before?’ So I felt a bit of pressure before the final. 

“Once the reality hit me I was, ‘Oh, yeah…’ I was used to scoring hat-tricks, but it took a time to sink in. And I was always the most nervous player in the squad – I’d always gone out with fear in the Cup finals I’d played in before, so I had to get over that first before I could settle into the game.

“Once I’d done that though, I was okay. And once I’d got my first goal I could feel it, just knew in my head that I was going to score more.

“When the third one went in (to make the score 4-0 with just 12 minutes remaining) the Cup was won and it was such a fantastic feeling – for me obviously, but for the whole team as well because of the achievement.

“We’d won FA Cups before, but this was doing the double in the first season of the National League and that was absolutely massive for us as a club.”

TRAVEL TRAUMA

What do you do if you’ve reached the FA Women’s Premier League Cup final but your club is so cash-strapped that you can’t afford the transport to get to the final’s venue?

That was the near-unbelievable quandary that faced Donny Belles ahead of the 1995-96 League Cup final, to be staged 150 miles south of Doncaster at Barnet FC’s Underhill stadium.

The answer, decided the players, was to have a sponsored run that they hoped would generate sufficient funds to pay for a coach to get them there and back.

“That’s just how it was for us,” says Walker with a resigned shrug. “You had teams like Arsenal, Everton and Charlton that were attached to (men’s) Premier League clubs and supported financially. We had nothing at that time.

“We’d lost a sponsor and it was a real struggle to get money into the club. But the sponsored run brought us enough cash to pay for a bus to get us down to Barnet.”

The final was against Wembley, and Walker - who like her 1991-92 FA Cup feat had hit a hat-trick in each of the rounds leading up to the final - scored Donny’s first goal.

That was an equaliser, and then the Belles took the lead through Rebecca Lonergan. But Wembley levelled the scores through a stoppage time penalty; and after a goalless extra time, it was Wembley who won the penalty shoot-out to lift the Cup.

So after their massive efforts just to get to the final, the Belles had only runners-up medals to accompany them on their homeward bus journey.

“The sponsored run obviously took it’s toll,” reflects Walker as she looks back, still resigned but also still retaining her dry sense of humour.  

“I’d played basketball before football,” she notes, “and if you’re going to be good at that game you’ve got to have a good leap. I had that, I could usually out-jump defenders, and I liked attacking the back post when crosses were coming over.

“But the most important thing was bravery. To be a good header of the ball you’ve got to be brave; and I was. I took a lot of knocks, but that was part and parcel of being a striker.

“I was aggressive myself, I was brave and maybe a bit daft, but never dirty. If a defender gave me a kicking, my retaliation was to score a goal.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Images from Julian Barker, Simon Mooney, Gavin Ellis/TGSPHOTO and Gary M Prior/Allsport/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.