When Jen Beattie travelled to Windsor Castle to collect her MBE for services to charity and football on Wednesday, she could not have envisaged how different the circumstances would be to the last time she was there. Two-and-a-half years ago, waiting to hear whether she had the all-clear from breast cancer, the Arsenal centre-back did the Long Walk to the castle with her parents.
“I’ve not told many this, but I do think it is a good part of the story to tell,” says Beattie, sitting in the new cafeteria for the women’s team at Arsenal’s London Colney training ground. “When I was waiting on results and we didn’t know the extent of it, mum and dad came down and we actually went on a day trip to Windsor.
“I remember doing the Long Walk with them when we were just in this crazy headspace. It was really, really difficult, the most difficult thing I’ve ever gone through in my life. So, two-and-a-half years later, to be back at Windsor Castle having been awarded for an MBE threw up the most mixed emotions I’ve ever had in my entire life. It was just a crazy full circle of a very weird achievement.”
Beattie is happy. Two days after collecting her MBE from Prince William, it was announced the 32-year-old had signed a new contract with Arsenal, extending her second spell in north London. Although Arsenal’s season was crippled by injuries, it ended on a personal high for Beattie, demonstrating her value on and off the pitch despite it being a rollercoaster of emotions.
“I understand my role and I understood when I signed last year that I wasn’t a starting player,” she says. “I had to flip my mentality to just be ready for whenever I was needed. And I think over the first sort of six or seven months I did that. I tried to train as hard as possible, and do all the extras I needed. You never want to see teammates get injured, especially not big injuries, so seeing Beth [Mead], Viv [Miedema], Leah [Williamson] and Laura [Wienroither] suffer ACL injuries has been really, really difficult.
“But obviously, I had to jump in and be ready, and I enjoyed it. It was an opportunity to show that I wanted to stay and to try and prove that I can still play at this level. I felt very lucky to be playing the big games, and it was a pressure cooker to be honest, towards the end of the season, but the mentality that everyone showed was really special.”
Having played so few minutes, Beattie played the entirety of Arsenal’s 2-2 draw against Wolfsburg in Germany, then scored in the 3-2 defeat at the Emirates in front of a record crowd of 60,063 – a domestic record attendance for a Champions League that she got to see from inside out, as she put her business and marketing degree to good use, helping the marketing team at Highbury House.
“Of course there was the anxiety of: ‘Hang on, I’ve not played consistently in a while, can I do it?’,” she says. Was Beattie surprised, then, at how good her performances were? “Massively,” she says, with a laugh. “I think self-doubt is probably what keeps me going, keeps me pushing myself, because I never think I’m at the right level. The minute I think I’m at that level, I’ll probably not get the job done. The way my head works is I always think I’m not as good and have to work harder.” Beattie’s goal then, to put Arsenal level in the tie before Wolfsburg scored an agonising late winner, couldn’t have been imagined “in a million years.”
In the crowd her partner, former Love Island winner Amber Gill, celebrated wildly, so wildly she tweeted later that she had been told to sit down. “I’ve just been told to sit down,” she tweeted incredulously. “EXCUSE ME MY GF JUST SCORED A HEADER!?!?”
On Saturday, Beattie will be at London Pride with Arsenal and supporters’ group Gay Gooners, an environment that allows her to be herself. “It is interesting, I didn’t hide my sexuality at all, but females playing football, we had to kind of go above and beyond to fit a mould,” she says. “So being open, more so now, and reading the messages I get, support from kids struggling to come out and how seeing me be visible is helping them, is number one.”
