When Football Fern Liv Chance plays in Hamilton during the lead-up to the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023, her mum and sister will be there on the sidelines – but they might not be cheering.
“My mum is my biggest supporter – she’s the reason I got to where I am because she’s very blunt,” laughs the effervescent sports star, Zooming from her adopted home in Scotland. Liv is part of the Celtic FC team, one of many international clubs she’s played for over the years. “She pushes me, keeps me level-headed. I don’t think I’ve really ever heard her say I’ve had a good game. I love her honesty and that’s what’s really driven me to be able to play away from home for so long.”
This week Liv travels home to Aotearoa from Bathgate – midway between Edinburgh, with its “Harry Potter” buildings, and Glasgow, where she occasionally hits the shops – to play for the Football Ferns, when they take on Portugal and Argentina in three international friendlies that will run alongside the FIFA Women’s World Cup Play-Off Tournament.
It means she gets to do something she’s never done before – play in front of her home crowd in Hamilton. The Play-Off Tournament is a first for the event, drawing international teams including Paraguay, Thailand and Haiti as they vie for a spot in the World Cup. New Zealand has already qualified, however the friendlies are a vital way in which the team can fine-tune their game leading into the big matches, says Liv, just as they’ll be fun and lively events for spectators, connecting them with some of the world’s top footballers.
“Playing in my hometown is an amazing opportunity that I would’ve never imagined,” says Liv of the Hamilton games. “Everyone in New Zealand gets an opportunity to see all these female footballers from different countries uniting in this tournament. This is the first real taste of what this year is about, and that’s exciting! You’ll see so many different styles and players and I think it shows how inclusive women’s football is.”
The 29-year-old attacking midfielder and left winger has been a member of the Ferns since she debuted for the team in 2011, but in the years since, she’s enjoyed a diverse and impressive career that has taken her around the world, playing for South Florida University while studying for a finance degree, to Australia (Brisbane Roar) before moving to England (Everton, Bristol City and Sheffield United), and Iceland (Breibablik), learning from top coaches and players along the way.
“My mum’s English so moving to England and playing football was something I’d always dreamed of when I was young,” says Liv.
Even as she pursued a global career, Liv has always maintained her ties to the Ferns in New Zealand, where she’s become one of the senior members of the team, her breadth of experience making her one of their most adaptable players, renowned for her technical skills on the field. Meanwhile it’s Liv’s second season with Celtic FC, after signing with them in 2021 following the Tokyo Olympics. She’d known Celtic FC head coach Fran Alonso since her days with Everton (2016-2018), making for an easier transition to the team, she says, alongside the fact her fiance Rob is also involved in football, working as a strength and conditioning coach.
“Our life was actually in Manchester, as he worked at Manchester City at the time, so it was about three and a half hours away [to Bathgate], so we made the decision that I would go and it worked out. But Rob and I are slowly, eventually, going to move back to Australia, where he’s from. Because I’m getting older, and I’ve been away from New Zealand since I was 18.”
When Reset catches up with Liv, it’s early Friday night in Scotland, and she’s just arrived home after a day’s training. In the coming week she’s anticipating a physical game against Edinburgh team Spartans, the match-heavy schedule for the Scottish League providing beneficial preparation for the FIFA Women’s World Cup games in New Zealand and Australia. Staying connected to the Ferns isn’t always easy from the other side of the world, but the team try to stay in touch online as much as possible. It helps that there are three fellow Kiwis playing in the Scottish League, so Liv always has a friend to catch up with for coffee.
“We really try to connect as much as possible, building a bond. I think it’s important for the squad to really know each other.”
Liv says she’s excited to return home for the Ferns, and is relishing the opportunity to foster some of the younger talent coming through.
“I love the ball and I’d love to score more goals – that’s a big focus. But I’m getting older and I need to create more opportunities and help the other girls as well. I really just want to be doing the fun stuff – I want to be the one that creates the goals, scores the goals, really pushes the team forward. I have the other players like [defensive midfielder] Ria Percival and they do the dirty work, and I get to do the fun stuff!”
Liv was born in Auckland but grew up in Tauranga, and first got into football when her older sister started playing. Because her mum was a football fan, she remembers watching the premier league teams play on TV, and says she developed the naïve expectation that playing football as a woman could follow a similar trajectory as the men.
“But it’s got so much better from when I first started as an 18-year-old,” she says. The two sisters even played together for a year at Hamilton side, Claudeland Rovers, and it was there Liv says her competitive streak really began to show, her passion for the sport encouraged by her sister too.
“If you asked her she’d probably say I was a pain in the ass,” Liv laughs. “I didn’t like to lose and that was in any sport, so I was quite a handful. And as I got older I’ve learned to control that competitiveness.”
Her drive to continue pushing herself meant it wasn’t always an easy run at the Ferns – when she decided to go to college she says it hindered how much she could be involved in the team. But it meant she got the opportunity to further her travels, first in the US, then in Australia and Europe.
“That made me a better player that hopefully benefits me now. Having that perseverance was a big thing for me and always believing in myself, because if a certain coach thought I was too small, having that self-belief and confidence to go, ‘no, actually I deserve to be here, let me shine and let me do what I’m good at’, is probably a big reason on why I made it.”
While playing for Everton, a year out from the 2019 Women’s World Cup, Liv’s perseverance was put to the test when she ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), an injury serious enough to warrant reconstructive knee surgery. For nine months, and with Rob’s help, Liv worked on her rehabilitation, having to relearn to walk before she could contemplate getting back on the field. Her tenacity paid off when she was selected to play with the Football Ferns in the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France in 2019.
The Tokyo Olympics was another opportunity for Liv to showcase her leadership with the Ferns. But with New Zealand co-hosting the FIFA Women’s World Cup, the stakes are inevitably higher and more exciting for this event.
“I really hope this World Cup is the start of the next journey for us,” says Liv. “I’d love to have a really good set-up in New Zealand where we can start creating more opportunities for girls not to have to live on the other side of the world from their family for 10 years to make a career of it.
“We want to perform well because we’re at home,” she adds. “That helps us and it does bring a certain amount of pressure, but for me personally, I love the pressure. You want to play in those high-pressure situations. I think that’s why this Play-Off Tournament will be good for us, because it’s about starting to get used to what we’re going to deal with in the FIFA Women’s World Cup. We want to win our first game at the World Cup. That’s a massive goal for all of us.”
The Play-Off Tournament for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 takes place from February 17-23 in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland and Kirikiriroa/Hamilton. To secure tickets for the friendlies and the Play-Off Tournament go to fifa.com/tickets