Man Utd’s Rachel Williams still regards plastering as her job and not football

Manchester United forward Rachel Williams says she still regards plastering rather than football as her job.

Williams, who has been playing in the Women’s Super League since it started in 2011, joined United from Tottenham last summer.

The Red Devils’ title bid continues with Saturday’s clash against West Ham at Old Trafford, a second match of the season at the ground for Marc Skinner’s team.

And ahead of the contest, Williams – a scorer off the bench in the first, the 5-0 win over Aston Villa in December – has spoken about how it is important for her to “just stay real to where I’ve come from”.

The 35-year-old said: “I’ve come from the very start of the WSL where we still worked, we only trained twice a week in the evening.

“I still don’t see or feel the pressure, or want other players to feel that. I feel that if you can play with freedom and loving the job we do, you don’t feel the pressure.”

Away from the game, Williams has run a plastering business with her partner.

“A lot of people say to me ‘what will you do when you finish football’, and I will go back into doing the plastering,” she said.

“I just love it – anything DIY, hands on, labour, hard graft. We just had two days off and I’m at home doing jobs. I have the garden to do, I have my brother round, we’re moving slabs, doing tip runs. I just love it.

“Growing up with football when it wasn’t full-time, even in the early days of the WSL, it gave you that switch off, like ‘that’s the real world’. I was living my dream but it was like ‘it’s never going to be something I can live off’. But now it is.

“For me, it has grounded me that this isn’t my job. When I come to training every day, that’s still for me not my job. My job is the plastering, and it’s on hold.

“Having to balance the two at times did get really hard, but it’s made me absolutely enjoy the football side of things more – I never feel pressure, and I think that’s a good asset.

“I will go back into the plastering – and maybe more, I want to do plumbing, electrics. I just love it.”

Williams, holder of 13 England caps and a member of Great Britain’s London 2012 Olympic squad, was with Leicester and Doncaster Rovers Belles before starting her WSL career with Birmingham. She has also had spells with Chelsea and Notts County.

Asked about giving advice, with the experience she has, to the likes of United and England duo Alessia Russo and Ella Toone, Williams said: “I told them a very funny story of when I was at Doncaster, we didn’t have a physio or physio equipment, and I had a dead leg.

“My manager took me into the cleaner’s cupboard and we just found some soap, so he could give my thigh a quick rub to get me on the pitch.

“And their minds are blown – but then it blows my mind, knowing what they are doing now. What advice can I tell them about pressure? They just won the Euros! It’s totally different for them now. They do have that pressure, for them it’s about how they can control it.

“But I was just speaking to my friend’s kid the other day, she’s in the Leicester academy, and I just said ‘it’s hard work’. You have to put in the hard work, and no matter how good you are, someone out there is training harder to be better than you.

“So you always have to keep on your toes with it – and that’s not pressure. That’s enjoy it, love what you’re doing, see it as a challenge.”

Williams has scored three goals in 10 WSL appearances for United this term, all of which have been made as a substitute.