‘I was so, so scared. They put a plastic cage around my head before I went head first into the machine’ Aston Villa goalkeeper Ellie Roebuck opens up about tough times at Manchester City and having a stroke at 24

When England won the Women’s European Championship for the second time, goalkeeper Ellie Roebuck was watching on from the outside again.

Roebuck was part of the Lionesses squad that became the European champions in 2022 but was kept out of the team by Mary Earps. Three years later, she was enlisted as a studio pundit, watching her friends and teammates retain the title in Switzerland.

For a player with less cause to have a keen sense of perspective, that might have been difficult to stomach. Roebuck has had more important things to worry about.

Ellie Roebuck is embracing the future

Now 25, Roebuck signed for Manchester City at the age of 15 and couldn’t have been happier. She trained once a week while she finished school.

“City was something I could never say no to,” says Roebuck in an emotional article for The Players’ Tribune. “The England girls had just come back from playing the World Cup in Canada, and seven of them were at City. I remember staying up late at night to watch their games, because of the time difference, then going into the facility to do a tour.”

Roebuck built a formidable reputation at City. She won the Women’s Super League in 2016 and has three Women’s FA Cup wins to her name. She won the League Cup three times with City too.

In 2021 she was Team GB’s goalkeeper at the Olympic Games, but Roebuck had been losing too much weight and overtraining. It was beginning to take a toll.

“After the Olympics, I came back to City. The first days of preseason, I felt really good. Then at training, I jumped for a routine cross, and my calf just went. Gone. Numb. I knew it wasn’t good,” she says.

“I didn’t realise it at the time, but my body was starting to break down… I was supposed to be out for six weeks. But six weeks turned into seven months. I just couldn’t get my calf right, and something just felt off. I tried to push on.”

The devastating physical effects of Roebuck’s obsessive training affected her game and her confidence. She went to the World Cup in 2023 despite poor form but lost her place in the City team.

“I remember we were training in the evening [in January 2024], and my eyes couldn’t adjust. I couldn’t see properly, even five feet away. It was so strange,” says Roebuck, who admits to harbouring high levels of stress at the time.

“I thought it might just be the darkness or something. But I felt like I was going to fall over, and I kept feeling super sick. That night, I told the team doctor what was going on.

“At the scanning centre, they put a plastic cage around my head before I went head first into the machine. It was so claustrophobic. I’ll never forget the noise … That awful clicking and banging and whirring, for over an hour. And I was just lying on my back. Alone in the room. I was so, so scared.”

24-year-old Roebuck had suffered a stroke. The brutal reality of 18 months without a match, of what a year and a half spent recovering from a stroke actually looks like for a young woman and her loved ones, doesn’t bear thinking about.

After signing a pre-contract agreement with Barcelona, Roebuck returned to the pitch last December. She didn’t play much first team football in her short spell in Spain and has a new club as the WSL season gets underway.

“I’m excited to start my new chapter at Aston Villa,” says Roebuck.

“I’ve got this burning love for the game again. Every training session feels like a gift, even when I’m not perfect, because I know what truly matters. I have a point to prove, but this time it’s not for anyone else but me.”