Rebecca McAllister's Road to Happiness
Making her SWNT debut was all that Rebecca McAllister had ever dreamt of but the happiness she was chasing didn't come. Now 20, she's back and hoping to help Partick Thistle to a first national final.
“Tough, six months is a long time to be out.”
In the 85th minute of Partick Thistle’s 2-0 victory over Aberdeen last Sunday, and for the first time in 238 days, Rebecca McAllister took to the pitch as an SWPL player.
“I’m very much trying to rebuild my sharpness on the pitch just now.”, shares the midfielder as we chat in the Thistle changing room three days before her new side face Hibernian in a Sky Sports Cup Semi-Final at Petershill Park, “Thinking back to the summer I thought I had decided I was never going to play again, so to get that first one out of the way, even if it was just a few minutes, was great.”
While her journey to this point has taken a number of detours McAllister’s start in football is similar to the many who now play at the elite level of the Scottish game as kickabouts with her older brothers would lead to mum booking regular trips to mini-kickers and summer football camps.
From there she joined local side Dumbarton United aged seven, thrown in with the U11’s because that was the youngest age group the club had.
The 20-year-old’s star would continue to rise and she would move to Glasgow Girls before at twelve she would sign for Celtic making her first team debut for the Glasgow club aged just fifteen in a 3-0 victory over Stirling University.
“It was a massive moment for me and my family. I was still playing for the U19’s and development sides at the time so it was quite unexpected when I got told I would be playing with the first team.”
After seven years with the club that she has supported since childhood McAllister decided that if she was to achieve the goals that she had set herself that it would be best to go in search of a fresh challenge.
“Celtic had been professional for two seasons by the time I had left. The standards were really high and the quality of players coming in was getting better and better but I had gone through a spell where I had a lot of injuries. Lots of little things that I couldn’t really shift and I spoke to Fran (Alonso, the Celtic Head Coach at the time) to say I was looking for more game time, that I maybe needed a change of scenery.”
“Initially I went on loan to Hearts for half a season. They played quite similarly to Celtic and it was quite an easy transition in that respect.”, remembers the midfielder, “It was a very young team and going from Celtic where you are one of the more inexperienced players to Hearts where actually you’re one of the ones who had a bit more experience, especially having gone through the national team systems, was a different challenge”.
At Hearts McAllister would create her own little bit of history, becoming the first Jambo since Shelley Kerr in 2001 to wear the dark blue shirt of Scotland, coming on as a second-half substitute during a 2-1 friendly victory over Venezuela in November 2022.
Although that wouldn’t be the first time that Scotland Head Coach Pedro Martinez Losa had drafted her into his squad, with the multi-capped youth international called up as a late replacement for a World Cup qualifier away to the Faroe Islands in September 2022.
“I was pretty surprised. It was the day before the game and by chance I had woken up at 8am. I had a missed call from a number I didn’t recognise and there was a WhatsApp message, it said unknown but when I checked the name it was Pedro asking me to phone back as soon as I can.”
“He told me that he wanted me to be part of the squad and asked if I could get a flight in a few hours time. I didn’t have time to think. It was a case of up, pack and then I arrived that evening.”
“I had missed training and turned up at dinner to meet people that I had looked up to for years. To then be next to those players and to be involved in the warm ups before kick off, it was incredible.”
She didn’t take to the pitch in Torshavn, although she still has two strips from that day, with her name, number and tiny saltire and Faroese crosses stretched across the back and chest. Two months later she would be called upon again for friendlies against Panama (an U23 fixture) and Venezuela where McAllister would make her Scotland debut as a second half substitute.
“Even getting that second call up you don’t feel guaranteed to be in,”, by this point some of her new team-mates had started to drop in ahead of that night’s training. “It’s not like a club where you are signed and you can see the path to try and break into the team. I saw it as more of an opportunity to showcase my talent and maybe lay down a marker for the future.”
“I kinda expected to play in the Panama game with it being an U23 game but I wasn’t expecting what came next and to make my official Scotland debut it was incredible.”
She visibly beams as she reflects on that moment, and with the footballing world seemingly at her feet she returned home, but once back in Scotland and with a new year on the horizon McAllister knew something wasn’t right.
“Going away with the A Squad it’s the pinnacle. The highest point. What you always dream of as a kid growing up in Scotland. I remember coming back from that camp and it hit me what I had achieved. I was supposed to be the happiest I had ever been and I wasn’t. I thought reaching the top would fix all my problems but it didn’t.”
The tone of the topic may have changed but Partick Thistle’s newest midfield addition continues to share her story with an assurance that belies her still young years.
“For a couple of years I had been struggling a bit mentally, off the pitch as well as on it. I loved football so much and I wanted to achieve success. I told myself I’ll get to the top and everything will be fine but that’s not true. Focusing on that meant I kind of buried everything and it just kept building and building over the course of last season. It finally came to a head just after Christmas.”
“I spoke to Eva (Olid, the Hearts Head Coach and McAllister’s manager at the time) and made her aware that I wasn’t feeling great, that I was going to step back from Scotland for a bit and focus on club football. Then I got in touch with Pedro and told him the same.”
She would continue to feature for Hearts for the remainder of the 2022/23 season but happiness would continue to allude her.
“I wanted to get to the end of the season and see how I was feeling but I wasn’t enjoying it. I had to tell myself that I couldn’t keep pushing something I wasn’t enjoying. I needed a break. That was difficult because up until that point football had been my whole life.”
“The last week of the season I spoke to Eva again and said that I wasn't looking to play football, that I was going to take a break and see how it goes. Despite how I was feeling there was still something quite nice about my last game for Hearts being at Celtic Park, I’d never played there when I was with them and to get that end to my time was quite fitting.”
And that was that. For most followers of the Scottish women’s game the midfielder had dropped off the map and away from football McAllister would live a pretty normal sounding life as a 20-year-old.
“My parents were probably my biggest support during that time and my friend Alex who I’ve known since my school days. They could see that I wasn’t happy and I think they were quite relieved that I had taken a break.”
“It was hard at first, I was very deliberately trying to stay away from football and what was going on in the league. I remember my mum and dad sitting and watching the opening game of the season on Alba but I just went to a different room and did something else.”
She would get a job housekeeping at a hotel as well as studying for a degree in Mathematics part-time at the Open University which she is continuing to work towards. Spending time with friends who thought football didn’t really mean anything at all.
“It was a kind of normal life. Taking things as they come and trying not to plan too far ahead. It got to November and I had started to watch football a bit more and the itch to get back playing returned. I got in touch with Brian Graham (Head Coach at Partick Thistle) and he was happy to have me along for training. It’s great to be back in a squad environment and to feel that camaraderie again. It’s good fun.”
“I feel like I’ve grown and I’m more settled in myself. Beforehand I was maybe subconsciously playing for other people whether that was to get consistent game time for the club or getting noticed at international level.”
Having felt the need to take a step back does she think football as a whole is doing enough to support the mental well-being of players?
“I do think it is developing all the time. When I was at Hearts we had a sports psychologist. We’d do a team meeting with him once a week but because it’s the whole team there’s stuff you’re not going to say so I had 1-2-1 sessions which were good as it gave me someone to talk to.”
“It’s very difficult in sport because naturally you want to be at your best, you don’t want to give a coach a reason not to play you. Maybe if you were to admit that you weren’t at 100% or not feeling totally confident on any given day then it gives a coach that reason. Because you are always competing you’re having to shut certain things out at times so it’s about trying to get a balance.”
“I do think things are improving but there is still more that can be done.”
Having made her Thistle debut McAllister will be hoping for a second appearance at what is set to be a noisy Petershill Park for the visit of Hibernian on Sunday, although it’s not just a Sky Sports Cup Final spot her and hew new team-mates are looking for.
“We want to be in the final and we believe we can get there but we’re also shooting for the top four. We’re right in amongst it and there is no reason we can’t be there looking to get points off the top three as well but on Sunday we’re treating it as just another game. We know what we can do to impact it and then we will see what happens.”
Win, lose or draw come full time on Sunday there appears a steady contentment to the manner in which McAllister will approach the second half of the season and for the many more that are potentially still to come for the youngster.
“I’m in a good place now, playing because I enjoy it. Trying not to worry about reaching targets and ticking boxes, taking each day as it comes.”
“I wanted to achieve things, I trusted in my ability as a player and believed in myself. Looking back I prioritised that over anything else and now I realise that football isn’t the most important thing, your happiness is.”
Partick Thistle host Hibernian in the Sky Sports Cup Semi-Final this Sunday at Petershill Park with a 16:10 kick off. The game is live on BBC Alba and tickets to take your spot on the terrace can be purchased here.
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