Coming back to football, my way

Slowly but surely, I started feeling the pull to write again.

I barely posted on Twitter through 2024 and 2025. I hadn’t blogged properly in years. And that wasn’t accidental. It was deliberate, even if I didn’t fully admit that to myself at the time.

I was spending more time trying to keep conversations going than actually watching and enjoying the games. I wasn’t letting myself be a fan anymore. I was always thinking about what I should say, how it would land, whether it would be challenged, whether I knew enough to justify saying it out loud.

That’s when the imposter feeling crept in. Not because I ever claimed to be an expert, but because it started to feel like that was what was expected. And as a woman in this space, that pressure hits differently. You don’t just show up. You prove. Over and over again.

It’s exhausting putting hours into writing, podcasting, travelling, and showing up, often being one of the few women in the room at the time, and still not being good enough to earn credentials to cover games when they come to London. You start questioning whether passion alone is allowed to be enough.

Then life happened. Divorce. Burnout. Losing the spark. All of it layered on top of each other. And at some point, I realised I wasn’t enjoying any of this anymore. So I stopped.

I went back to just being a fan. Watching. Cheering. Letting Sundays be Sundays again. Not trying to impress anyone. Not trying to justify why I love the game. And honestly, I loved that version of things more than I expected to.

But I missed the community. A lot. Some of you are real friends now. Some of you stayed in touch outside of football, followed my escapades on Instagram, and checked in just to see how I was doing. Those messages meant more than I probably ever said out loud, so thank you.

When I posted last month on Twitter about feeling inspired again, I didn’t expect the response I got. The kindness. The messages telling me to take my time. The people saying they’d missed hearing my thoughts. The ones who simply checked in. It reminded me why this space mattered to me in the first place. And somewhere in all of that, I realised I was ready to start showing up again.

Life feels good. It’s been on the up for over a year now, and a lot of that is thanks to the man in my life. We’ve been together for a year and a half now. His name is Morgan. We own a house together. He is fully on board with Sundays revolving around football, and I’ve even converted him into watching.

His favourite colour is purple, which meant the shortlist was the Ravens or the Vikings. He flirted briefly with the Vikings, mainly because of Justin Jefferson and the Netflix series, but decided their logo looked constipated, which is fair analysis, honestly. So the Ravens it was. Lamar Jackson, Zay Flowers, and a few others caught his attention. Which means yes, I am once again in a divided household. Some things never change.

And then there was the Super Bowl. Watching the Seattle Seahawks lift the Lombardi again felt grounding in a way I didn’t expect. I was in our new home, with Morgan, with one of his friends who is also a fellow Seahawks fan, watching the game properly. No second screen. No half-thinking about keeping the conversation online alive. Just the shared experience, the nerves, the excitement.

Somewhere after that, I realised how much I’d missed it. Talking ball. Writing about it. Sharing what last season really told us. Why some teams feel exciting right now, and why others still feel unresolved.

Which brings us to this moment, Thursday 26 February. The London games were announced yesterday. Washington as a home team at Tottenham. The Jaguars taking two home games, one at Wembley and one at Tottenham. And instead of feeling pressure to perform a take, I felt curiosity. Genuine interest. The kind that makes you want to write something properly, not rush it.

That’s where NFLGirlUK has always felt most honest to me. This was never meant to be a machine. It only ever worked when it was a fan watching carefully, overthinking freely, and writing when there was actually something worth unpacking.

There’s no structure attached to this. No promise of consistency. Sometimes this will be long posts. Sometimes a few thoughts elsewhere. Sometimes it will be quiet again. I’m comfortable with that now.

If I’m here, it’s as me. Liz. Just a fan who loves the game. And right now, that feels like exactly enough.