The 15-year-old Leah Williamson who was sitting on a bench in the Olympic Park on Super Saturday, soaking up the Olympic glow as her Milton Keynes hometown hero Greg Rutherford won gold in 2012, would not have been able to envisage that nine years later she would be standing in red, white and blue and singing the national anthem as she prepared to make her Olympic debut.
Yet that is where she found herself on Saturday. “It was good,” says the centre-back with the biggest of grins after Team GB had defeated the host nation Japan 1-0. “I had to keep my eyes closed for the national anthem because I felt like I was gonna cry. I waited for the camera to pass and then got a bit teary.”
If 2012 taught Williamson one thing it was that she wanted to be an Olympian. “I’ve just been so inspired,” she says. “I feel like I say that all the time but my family brought me up just surrounded by sport, any type of sport, any event, and that’s why London 2012 was so amazing because you just dived into it all. And, I don’t know, it just it got me. So I think that to have the opportunity to be here, but also to be part of that club now, Team GB, just feels … it’s very nice.”
The Tokyo Games is not like 2012, there are no fans inside stadiums and none can bask in the glow of things in the vicinity as the Arsenal defender did either. In London, Williamson was with her parents and her brother and they would have travelled to Japan if they could. “It’s sad not having my mum here, she would have been crying,” she says. “And my dad, the family, but at the same time I’m just so proud. And to make my debut alongside the girls, in a win: fairytale.”
Williamson was brought in alongside Manchester City’s Steph Houghton and in place of Chelsea’s Millie Bright for the second game in Group E partly to spread the load among them, with games coming thick and fast, and partly because the ball-playing centre-back made sense against the technically sharp Japanese players.
“Naturally, in the first half, we sat off them but we were very organised in that,” she says. “They didn’t play through us, which was the aim. As soon as you bring on somebody as attacking as Caz [Caroline Weir], naturally we just started to possess the ball a little bit higher. It was something that really helped us and I don’t think they knew what to do when she did come on and started overloading the wide areas.
“In the second half we saw GB at our best in terms of trying to dominate the opposition and creating chances and set pieces. The goal was deserved in the end, I think it went with the run of play, but Japan is such an organised team, it would have been good if we’d been a little bit more clinical, a little bit more ruthless.”
Team GB’s second clean sheet of the tournament was only the fourth in all 12 games at the tournament and they are the only team not to have conceded.
“I’m buzzing with that,” says Williamson. “At the end, literally, I think I would have put my foot through a brick wall if I could have to keep the ball out. I feel like we really started to control the game and even at the end I didn’t feel like we were too exposed.”
The manager, Hege Riise, has concurred with Williamson, saying. “First in our mind is to attack, we want to score goals, we want to win – but this team has so much pride in defensive organisation and being a good defending team.”
Should Team GB draw with or beat Canada on Tuesday then they will top Group E and set up a quarter-final with, most likely, either the US or Australia. Should they lose to Canada then they are likely to face one of Brazil or Netherlands. Thoughts on which team it would be better to face in the quarter-finals, however, do not outweigh the desire to win and to keep the team’s momentum.
“We want to top the group and that’s what we’ll be going to do,” says Williamson. “We need to beat Canada for us to go on to the next game and feel good. We want to be in control of the group.”
That desire is “strong” throughout the squad says Riise. “We feel like we have a great opportunity now to win the group and to win the game on Tuesday and we all desire to do that. That’s the main focus now.”
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Potentially blocking their momentum is a familiar face. The Canada manager Bev Priestman was assistant to Phil Neville with England before she took the head coach role with the north American side. “She knows what our strengths and all our weaknesses,” says Williamson. Riise, however, points to their own mole – her assistant Rhian Wilkinson won bronze with Canada in 2012 and played with or coached many of the players in the side.
“She knows the players. Some of them were her teammates, some of them were coached by her for many years, so of course she has insight into that team,” says Riise. “Of course she’s preparing us for the best outcome for us tomorrow, and she’s highly valued here with Team GB, as a person and as a coach. These are two teams that know each other quite well. It’s no secret.”