Perth Glory star Megan Wynne tells aleagues.com.au how her dream journey from Tottenham Hotspur fan, to a club employee and ultimately to the first team led her to believe that anything is possible in football.
From wearing baggy, hand-me-down Tottenham Hotspur kits her elder brothers had outgrown as a child, to helping the club seal promotion to the Women’s Super League for the very first time, Megan Wynne is a footballer who quite literally grew into her Spurs shirt.
The 32-year-old Welsh international grew up in England in a Tottenham-mad household, accompanying her dad to games home and away, practically swimming in her brothers’ old kits that were several sizes too big.
Little did Wynne know then that one day, she’d follow in the footsteps of her Spurs idols – the likes of David Ginola, Teddy Sheringham, Dimitar Berbatov and, unsurprisingly, Welsh wizard Gareth Bale – to represent the club herself.
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But it wasn’t until Wynne was 26 that her dream of becoming a professional turned into a reality; at the time, Wynne was a full-time employee at Tottenham, but in the club’s Human Resources department, not as a player.
What happened next set the now-Perth Glory star on a new life path, with her status as a professional footballer helping to create the memories of a lifetime in a Tottenham squad that made history, and led her to the Ninja A-League.
“I was working in HR at an IT company when I started playing for Spurs on the side,” Wynne told aleagues.com.au.
“Then I saw an advert come up for what I was doing but for Tottenham. I applied for that role and luckily enough got it. I was based at Lilywhite House in the day and in the evenings, three/four nights a week I’d go and train.
“It was very different to my life now, but it properly mapped out my career and made me the person and player I am today. I had to work very hard; all of us had full-time jobs or were students.
“I think having someone in the offices at the time when no one really knew about the women’s team helped. I’d go in and everyone would talk to me about it whereas before a lot of the staff would say that no one really spoke about the women’s team, it was very much about the men’s team. I don’t think people knew that we existed.
“I had a lot of involvement in the staff portal, so I always used to post our stories in there to try and get people aware – and I think it definitely helped. It’s a massive club, but there weren’t that many people working in the offices. It was good to push the women’s team out there.”
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Wynne joined Tottenham in 2018 after two previous stints at Spurs on loan from Watford, a fellow London side she first joined at the age of 10 after impressing at a summer camp run by the club.
It was an interesting time at Tottenham in 2018; since 1991, the Spurs women’s side was associated with the club by name, crest and kit alone. It wasn’t until the 2018-19 season when a Spurs squad featuring Welsh winger Wynne earned promotion from the second tier of English football to the newly-professionalised Women’s Super League that the club stepped in to move the women’s team in-house.
Wynne looks back at the 2018-19 FA Women’s Championship season as a defining moment in her playing career.
“In my first season back at Tottenham we got promoted to the WSL,” Wynne said. “I look back at that season, the promotion season, as my favourite season to date in football. Just because of getting promoted, the squad we had there and the competitive nature.
“We didn’t have the biggest budget – we weren’t even owned by Tottenham Hotspur at the time. We were owned by two women and it was a separate franchise – which was a bit crazy. We wore the shirt, but we didn’t really have anything to do with the men’s team at all.
“It was only once we had broken down the barriers and got ourselves promoted that the club had to come in and start investing. Because if they were going to stay in that league – and obviously, to the outside if they weren’t investing it wouldn’t have looked great on the club as a whole, for a big club such as Tottenham Hotspur.
“Then things started to change. We got promoted and we had to go full-time. I think there were only 10 of us from that promotion squad that got a contract for the next season; I had to make the decision whether to give up my secure, full-time job for a one-year full-time contract.
“And as you know in women’s football, the salaries aren’t massive – so I had to make the decision: do I want to do something I love, or work in an office? I think I made the right decision now, in terms of choosing to go full-time with my football because the opportunities that came off the back of that have been great. It was a bit of a whirlwind.
“The way that Tottenham’s progressed now, no one would really know that about six years ago, that was where it was. It’s come a long way and if it wasn’t for that squad we had then that put everything in to get promoted, the club wouldn’t be where it is now and fighting in the mid-table in the WSL, with all the players they’ve managed to bring in. That’s one of my fondest memories of my career to date.”
Signing professionally with Tottenham at 26 in 2019 was a dream moment for Wynne, who left the club’s HR department to focus entirely on contributing to its first-ever season in the Women’s Super League which, for the first time in 2018-19, was a fully-professional competition.
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Memories of her childhood came flooding back as Wynne put pen to paper on her first pro deal at the club she had supported since she could first remember.
“It really sunk in when I signed my first professional contract,” Wynne said.
“It really hit home that it’s my club and I’m getting to wear the shirt every day and do it as my job. That was really exciting for me and my whole family. I have two older brothers and my dad who love Tottenham; it’s been their life for a long time. The pride that they had meant a lot to me.
“Everyone wants to play for their dream club, don’t they? And I got to do that. I’m very proud of that achievement and look back on it fondly.
“I went to White Hart Lane numerous times, and my dad sometimes took me to away games which was a completely different atmosphere.
“I remember going to a game at Nottingham Forest with my dad, I must’ve been about six or seven, and I wore my brother’s baggy hand-me-down. I remember wearing that, and it was about 10 sizes too big. It definitely runs in the family.
“When we got promoted to the WSL, I didn’t know I was then going to suddenly be a professional footballer. That journey in itself of not signing professionally until you’re 26 shows you should never really give up and how the shape of women’s football has changed in the UK, the opportunities that are there now, they were never there when I was growing up.
“When I was younger I was watching an FA Cup Final with my mum, and it went to extra-time. And because there was something else coming on the TV, the game went onto the red button so you couldn’t watch it any more. I remember saying to mum: ‘What do you mean it’s gone off? I can’t watch it anymore?’ That’s the level it used to be at, that it would cut off if it went to extra-time.
“That really sticks in my head of where it was. That would never happen now, thankfully.
“It’s amazing how quickly the transformation has changed. I even remember playing for Wales, and I’d take unpaid leave from my job so I’d actually be losing money to play for my national team, which was really bizarre. I think it’s been a massive journey and without current and former players pushing the way and breaking down barriers, these things would’ve never happened.”
Wynne found minutes harder to come by at Tottenham in the Women’s Super League and, in 2020, elected to take up a loan offer at Bristol City in 2020.
But just three games into her stint at the club, an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury led to what Wynne describes as “the biggest challenge of her career,” with her road to recovery coinciding with the strict isolation rules of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021 she returned to football at Charlton Athletic before a two-year stint at Southampton in the Women’s Championship. Then, it was on to Western Australia and Perth Glory where, across her current two-year deal, Wynne hopes to produce a consistent run of form that can revitalise her international career with Wales ahead of UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 – the first major tournament the Welsh women’s international team has ever qualified for.
“Even though I was born in England, I’ve always very much thought of myself as Welsh,” Wynne said.
“All my dad’s side of the family lives in Wales and I was often there as a kid, and have very fond memories there. I was very close to my grandparents so when I got the opportunity at a young age I jumped at it.
“I’m on 24 caps now, so if I can get one more and make it to 25 that would be lovely! I’ve not been involved for a year or so now, which has obviously been difficult.
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“The first camp I didn’t get selected for I was on standby which at the time was very hard to deal with, when you’ve been involved for so long with that core group of players. It was bittersweet watching them qualify for the Euros, I was so delighted and grateful to be a part of it and buzzing for all of the girls, I was on FaceTime with them on the coach which was hard not to be a part of, but I was still buzzing.
“There’s still a desire to get back in at some point but I’m focussing on my performances here and trying to make an impact. Hopefully, the rest will take care of itself.
I’m still in close contact with the manager; I get on with Rhian (Wales head coach Rhian Wilkinson) well. There’s still a desire to push back in. When I didn’t get selected I thought I had to think of myself and my playing time; it was always a risk (to join Perth) but never say never, hopefully, I’ll push myself back in and see what happens.”
“I think I’ve really enjoyed the different challenge coming over here,” Wynne added.
“I came to a bit of a crossroads in my career, and I felt like I’d kind of done everything in the UK that I’d wanted to do. I had played in the WSL and the Championship for a very long time, and it was getting to a point where it was all the same players that rotated around teams.
“After a good 10 seasons, I felt the time was right to push myself, put myself in a different environment, challenge myself, meet new people and kind of explore the world a little bit. And I’m really happy with the decision I made, and feel like I’ve settled in really well.”
Wynne and Glory have four games left in the 2024-25 Ninja A-League season to save their slim finals hopes, with six points currently separating the WA side from the top six.
But with three of their last four games taking place at home at the Sam Kerr Football Centre, Wynne is confident in her side’s ability to make one last push to the post-season, beginning with Saturday’s home clash with Western Sydney Wanderers – the first of two home games on the bounce for a motivated Perth side.
“The run-up to these last four games, it’s huge,” Wynne said.
“We know how difficult task, and it also depends on other teams dropping points, but we’ve got two back-to-back home games and they’re very winnable. We have to focus on performance, and I think we really, really need to focus on keeping a clean sheet and scoring more goals.
“Obviously it’s going to be difficult, but we’re taking it game by game. Never say never – anything can happen.”
Wynne and Glory face Western Sydney Wanderers on Saturday, March 22 at the Sam Kerr Football Centre, in Round 20 of the Ninja A-League season.
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