Rachel Daly interview: England hero eager to keep breaking boundaries with Aston Villa

Daly was driving to the supermarket when she got a call from her agent asking if she had received a letter from Buckingham Palace.

“I hadn’t got it,” she says. “For some reason, it had gone to my accountant. My agent then says: ‘Rachel, you’ve got an MBE’.

“I was so shocked. I’m sat there in my car, on the way to Aldi, living my normal day-to-day life and I get this news. It was all quite surreal.

“I rang my mum because she loves the Royal Family and all that stuff. She was crying, excited. Out of everything I have achieved in my life, I think this is probably her proudest moment.”

Daly will receive her medal, awarded for services to football, later this month. Special though the occasion will undoubtedly be, the pomp and pageantry will also be a world away from where she has always felt most at home and it is the pursuit of more glory on the football pitch, rather than a palace, which continues to drive her.

While Royal recognition came as a complete surprise, Daly did enter the summer knowing she stood a fair chance of being named Villa captain after Rachel Corsie’s retirement at the end of last season.

Already vice-captain, she had regularly deputised for the Scotland international. It also slowly dawned on her, as such things rather depressingly do for us all at some point, she was now the oldest member of the squad.

“I look back and think, how did this happen? How did I become the oldest?” she laughs. “I was always a young player. Now being the oldest at Villa, I can’t say it is something I love but my body feels good, so that’s all that matters.”

At 33, Daly remains as passionate about football as she has ever been. There is not a moment in her life she can recall not being obsessed with a sport she claims to have been playing “pretty much since I came out of the womb”.

It is a love which has taken her on a remarkable journey, from the playing fields of Harrogate, her hometown, to Leeds United, Lincoln City, New York, Houston and then back to the UK with Villa. Neither does she believe it anywhere close to finished yet.

“I feel I have so much more to give,” says Daly. “I want to keep growing. I want to see how far I can get. I want to push myself to the absolute limit.

“To take the role of captain is a massive honour for me. I love the club. I love everything it stands for. I love being part of it.” 

Daly might only now have taken the armband on a permanent basis but ever since joining Villa from Houston Dynamo three years ago she has been their most recognisable and revered player.