As baptisms of fire go, there could surely be few more daunting than the one that 15-year-old goalkeeper Rachel Brown had to endure as she faced the mighty Arsenal on her Liverpool debut at the Reds’ iconic Anfield stadium.

Arsenal were the FA Women’s Premier League champions and the best team in the country, while Brown (Brown-Finnis following her 2013 marriage) was surprised to be in the Liverpool goal following her recent transfer from Accrington and with the Reds’ established keeper Tracey Davidson an England international.

Liverpool had enjoyed an excellent 1994-95 season, finishing runners-up to the Gunners and so could claim to be the country’s second best team at that time. But there had been a 13-point gap between the two teams at the end of that campaign. And on what was 1995-96’s opening day, the goals gap was 6-0 as schoolgirl Brown made an extremely busy Premier League debut.    

“That was quite a day,” says Brown-Finnis in somewhat of an understatement as she looks back at the start of her FAWPL career. “I thought I was going to be on the substitutes’ bench,” she adds, “but a couple of weeks before the start of the season Tracey Davidson decided to retire and so I was thrown in at the deep end.

“I’d been playing for Accrington at a much lower level than the National Division and suddenly I was at Anfield playing against Arsenal! I didn’t have time to be starry-eyed about it though, I was too busy. I distinctly remember Kelly Smith scoring with a rocket of a volley from outside the box and thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is what the Premier League’s all about!’ And I had to learn fast.”

Discovering the power of England striker Smith’s shooting was just part of Brown’s learning process, a process that had begun as soon as she became part of the Liverpool squad. And there was a big surprise in store for her as she got to know her new team mates.  

She recalls: “It was in the summer when I joined the club and for the first few weeks there were only a handful of us training on a primary school pitch. I was thinking that we needed to sign a few more players if we wanted to put a full team out once the season started.

“But then these other players turned up, Karen Burke, Becky Easton, Clare Taylor - they’d been playing for England at the World Cup in Sweden. And I was, ‘Oh wow, there’s an England team!’ I didn’t have a clue about that before, but suddenly women’s football seemed so much bigger.”

It was indeed so much bigger, and Burnley-born Brown was to help make it even bigger in a 30-year career that saw her star for Everton as well as Liverpool and win 82 England caps.

She ended her first season at Liverpool with an FA Cup final appearance as the Reds lost on penalties to Croydon. Still 12 months short of her GCSE exams at that point, Brown went on to complete ‘A’ levels then spent five years at colleges in America on soccer scholarships.

On her return, and by now in the England set-up having had many transatlantic flights to play for the national team, she chose to sign for Everton rather than return to Liverpool.

“When I came back,” she says, “I wanted to play in the top league and unfortunately Liverpool had been relegated. Mo Marley (Everton manager) got in touch with me and asked me to join them, and it was an easy decision.

“The women’s game in England back then was nothing like I’d seen in America. They’d started a professional league over there, the players were well paid and they were celebrities, especially the ones in the national team.

“When England played them it was as though they were from a different planet. Our skill levels were up there, but we’d fade towards the end of the first half and again towards the end of the game. They were athlete football players, we were just footballers.

“It was when we started working on our strength and conditioning that we started to get better, and once that started happening with the England players it spread into the league. 

“There was a pool of international players at a number of clubs, like Arsenal, Everton and for a while Charlton and Fulham, and their work - along with important input from (England fitness coach) Dawn Scott - helped to boost fitness levels in their squads.”

It was not so much a case of boosting as regaining fitness for Brown when, in December 2003, she sustained a serious knee injury that kept her out of action for 18 months.

The keeper’s recovery from her ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injury was a frustrating as well as a slow process, though she was thankful for the support of Liverpool John Moores University and the Football Association.

“I was at the university on a sports scholarship” says Brown-Finnis, who was now playing semi-professionally and studying for a PE degree. “Everton didn’t have the financial resources for the lengthy treatment I needed, but I got good support from the university and the FA helped to nudge things along as I was in the England set-up.

“I was lucky in that respect. Most (women’s) teams didn’t have club doctors and some didn't have a club physio. And players generally didn’t have contracts that covered medical issues. But that’s just how things were then.”

Fortuitously for her international career, Brown was back in action just in time for the 2005 Euro finals that were staged in the North West of England. And after regaining her place as the national team’s first choice keeper, she went on to play in World Cups, further European Championships and for Team GB at the 2012 Olympic Games.

Meanwhile at club level she was part of Everton’s Arsenal-chasing team that finished runners-up to the near-perennial champions in five successive seasons up to 2009-10, most agonisingly when the Toffees lost out on goal difference after being beaten in the last game of the 2008-09 campaign at home to the Gunners.

“That was horrible,” recalls Brown-Finnis with feeling. “We only needed a draw to finish top, but the pressure got to us. We didn’t back ourselves 100 per cent, and I think that was because we had a sort of inferiority complex about Arsenal.

“It was a bit like England playing against Germany in those days. We always thought we’re not going to beat them, and it cost us. But after that Arsenal game we had words with ourselves, we galvanised as a squad and after that we played against them without fear.”

The fear factor removed, Everton finished the pre-Women’s Super League era with a memorable 2010 FA Cup final victory over Arsenal at Nottingham Forest’s City Ground. The win also sweetly bookended Brown’s Premier League career, the now 29-year-old keeper having lost an FA Cup final in her debut 1995-96 season but then winning the Cup in 2010 before stepping into the WSL with Everton.

“That was one of the best days of my career,” remembers Brown-Finnis. “We won the game in extra time so it was pretty dramatic, and then we had brilliant celebrations back in Liverpool. We were still in our tracksuits when we got off the team bus, but we went straight into town and had a great night.”

Married three years later to golf caddy Ian Finnis, the now Rachel Brown-Finnis was to retire in January 2015. “I was still getting the pain in my knee that I’d been having on and off going all the way back to my (2003) ACL injury,” she says.

“I didn’t have the best post-op from that first surgery and I'd had 10 or 11 surgeries since, so at 34 I decided to call it a day and pursue other interests. But I wanted to stay in football.” And stay in football she did, working for leading TV and radio networks as she carved out a successful career in the media.  

ALL IN THE SAME BOAT 

Before the professionalisation of women’s football in England following the formation of the WSL, the vast majority of players in the FA Women’s Premier League were amateurs and so had to juggle work commitments with training schedules and playing matches - often with long journeys involved.

Brown-Finnis says: “There was nothing laid on a plate for us. You bought your own kit; you washed your own kit; you paid for your own travel. And we were all in the same boat.  We had jobs, although for most of us they weren’t careers but jobs that would allow us to play football. 

“There were no players making loads of money from football. Some of us were flat-lining from a bank balance point of view, but we had each other's backs. We went through the highs and lows together, the hardships and the sacrifices, and we built lifetime friendships that I know I can rely on forever.

“When the (women’s) game became professional at the top level I think some of that was lost - not that I didn’t want professionalism coming in, and it’s been great in terms of giving players a well paid career and raising the profile of women’s football in general.

“But with money now an integral part of the game, with transfer fees, agents looking after players’ interests, the possibility of big sponsorship deals, I wonder if players are able to become life-long friends with as many team mates as we were able to. I just hope they do.”

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Images from Gavin Ellis/TGSPHOTO, kipax.com and Simon Mooney for the FA’s Official Photo Library.