Beth Mead: From Hinderwell to Euro 2022 via Middlesbrough and Sunderland

Mead is the leading scorer at the tournament after also claiming England’s winner in their opening group game against Austria, and is now well established as one of the leading lights in women’s football.

Born in Whitby, and nurtured at both Middlesbrough and Sunderland, the 27-year-old forward is a real success story for both North Yorkshire and the North-East. What was her journey to the pinnacle of the world game?

EARLY DAYS

While she was born in Whitby, Mead grew up in Hinderwell, a small village which is about a mile from Staithes, just off the A174 between Saltburn and Sandsend.

While Hinderwell does not exactly have much of a footballing infrastructure, it is where her journey to the European Championships began when she was a pupil at the village's Oakridge Primary School.

Beth Mead returns to Oakridge Community Primary School, her former school in Hinderwell, to open some new facilities in 2013

“I had a lot of energy as a kid and because of that, my mum wanted to get rid of some of that energy and decided to take me to a Saturday morning football session on a village field in Hinderwell, which was run by a guy who volunteered,” said Mead, in an interview with the FA’s website about the grassroots game.

“I went down there one day and he turned around and said to me and my mum, ‘It’s fine that you’re coming down to get involved but you will be the only girl here. They are quite rough, so will she be okay?’

“My mum replied, ‘She’ll be fine’, because she just wanted to get rid of me, I reckon. But when she came back an hour later, he basically said I was rougher than most of the boys! The guy ended up saying, ‘She’s quite a talented footballer so you’ll probably need to go a bit further afield to have a chance to play somewhere with other girls’.

That took Mead to Middlesbrough, where she played for both California Boys and California Girls before eventually joining Middlesbrough’s Centre of Excellence at the age of ten.

In the meantime, however, she was selected captain of her primary school team at Oakridge, and a run of increasingly stellar success began.

“I played at Oakridge Primary for the boys’ team and I was the only girl playing at the time,” continued Mead. "The more I played though, there were other girls who wanted to join in, and we used to play other schools in the area.

“There were about four girls who played in the team alongside the boys, and I was made captain of the primary school team at the time, so maybe that made the other girls feel more comfortable, seeing I had been accepted and made captain.

"We won the local primary school cup that year with four girls in the team, so that is pretty good when you think about it, especially nearly 20 years ago.”

TIME ON TEESSIDE

Having been spotted playing for Teesside-based boys and girls’ teams, Mead was offered a place at Middlesbrough’s Centre of Excellence towards the end of her primary school days.

She would play against other teams from the north of England, and her goalscoring abilities quickly became evident, earning a maiden call-up to England’s representative teams at Under-15 level. She spent six years with Middlesbrough’s female youth set-up, but with the club not having a well-established senior women’s side, by the time she was turning 16, it had become apparent she was ready to move on.

“My centre of excellence coach, Andy Cook, was a big influence on me,” said Mead. “I was maybe not great at coming out of my comfort zone, but the people there really helped.

Beth Mead (bottom right) with her team-mates at Middlesbrough's Centre of Excellence

“I remember the end of my time at Middlesbrough clearly because I was 16, and I was playing against Sunderland (in a youth game). I didn’t start that game, because I woke up with a kink in my neck. I was getting my dad to massage it on the bus journey there, and at half-time, I got brought on.

“I scored a hat-trick in the second half, and the senior Sunderland manager was there and said, ‘I need this girl to come and play for me. What can I do?’ At that time, I was in a bit of a comfort zone, and the Centre of Excellence was going to go to Under-17s so I could have had another year there.

“In my head, I thought I could stay and do what I was doing, instead of pushing myself at women’s level. Luckily, both my mum and dad wouldn’t settle for me being that big fish in a small pond, and they pushed me to go. It was the best decision I ever made.”

STARRING AT SUNDERLAND

From the minute she joined Sunderland, it was clear Mead was a star in the making. She scored 23 goals in 23 league matches in her first season with Sunderland Ladies, then claimed 30 goals in 28 games in the following campaign.

After a controversial reorganisation of the women’s pyramid left the Lady Black Cats in WSL2, Mead’s goals were a major factor in the club’s promotion back to the top-flight for the 2015 season.

A hat-trick against league leaders Chelsea during the 2015 campaign provided further confirmation of her abilities, with Sunderland briefly topping the table after she scored another two goals in a win over Bristol City. Mead ended the 2015 season as the WSL’s leading scorer, with 12 goals from 14 appearances.

Beth Mead celebrates with Sunderland Ladies team-mates Keira Ramshaw and Sophie Williams after scoring in a FA Women's Cup victory against Keynsham

“For me and Sunderland, it was about proving a point that we could handle ourselves in the Super League,” said Mead, in a podcast appearance with Roker Rapport. “I remember the Chelsea game – they were unbeaten before they played us, then we beat them 4-0 at home.

“For me and the team, it was an unbelievable season – we proved our worth. We proved we deserved to be there, and individually, I proved I could do it at that level. A lot of people had said, ‘She can do it in WSL2, but can she do it in WSL1?’ I wanted to do the best I could for the team, and halfway through the season, we were top of the league. We were buzzing about that because we were fighting against the best teams in England.”

During her time with Sunderland, Mead combined her footballing career with studying for a degree in sports development at Teesside University. She has praised the way in which the university supported her twin commitments, and funds the Beth Mead Scholarship, a scheme that provides financial support to four female footballers studying at Teesside University each year.

Beth Mead is pictured after graduating from Teesside University

“The university supported me amazingly to keep up to date,” said Mead. “They supplied me with books, whatever I needed at the time when I wasn’t in and missed classes. That really stuck with me, how well they looked after me.”

OFF TO ARSENAL

Having turned down an offer to leave Sunderland a year earlier, Mead eventually joined Arsenal in January 2017.

“At that time, I was fully professional, but they (Sunderland) were starting to cut players down to semi-pro level,” she explained. “The club was kind of going backwards, which was a real shame. Arsenal was a dream for me, but the decisions that were being made meant my decision was probably easier than it might otherwise have been. It was a good time for me start a new challenge.”

Arsenal's Beth Mead fires at goal during a WSL game against Tottenham at the Emirates

It proved an inspired move. Arsenal won the WSL Continental Tyres Club during Mead’s first season in north London, and she finished the 2017-18 campaign as the leading scorer in the WSL. The following season she broke the record for the highest number of assists in a WSL season with 12, forming a formidable partnership with Dutch star Vivianne Miedema.

She was part of the England side that reached the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup, but was a surprise omission from the Team GB squad for last year’s Olympics. She has been a regular under current England boss Sarina Wiegman, though, culminating in Monday’s dream display against Norway.

“Beth is so confident now,” said Ian Wright, who was a BBC pundit on Monday. “Everything she’s done, her game has (gone) up. It builds confidence. She’s a goal-scoring monster at the minute.”