Mary Fowler’s dream was to go to the Olympics. Now, she’s focused on a personal goal

In sport, it’s said the “lucky” athletes get to decide when – and how – they retire. Sadly, injury or illness often intervene. For the Matildas’ Mary Fowler, life after soccer ideally looks like this: a farmhouse with animals, a vegie patch and, if she gets her way, a top-of-the-line coffee machine (more on that later).

Hopefully, for the 22-year-old – who’s also a star player for Manchester City in England’s Women’s Super League – that dream is still a long way off. Because the curly haired girl from Cairns, who was first selected for the Australian national team at just 15, is only getting started.

Still, not long ago, after rupturing her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in April’s FA Cup semifinal against Manchester United, Fowler was forced to contemplate life without football. “Whenever I’ve been injured, it’s made me appreciate the game even more,” Fowler says via Zoom from her apartment in Manchester, where she has been based since 2022.

Freshly showered and wearing a greenish jumper, her signature dark hair spilling to the edges of the screen, Fowler appears relaxed and happy.

Prior to this spell on the sidelines, the two-time Olympian’s longest break from football was three months in 2023, the result of a back injury. “I’ve always had passions outside of football, and I’m the kind of person who gets really excited about doing things when I’m finished playing. I have confidence knowing that there is a version of me outside of football that can be just as good at something else.”

Fowler proved that point last month when she made her catwalk debut in the L’Oréal Paris Le Défilé – a runway celebrating diversity in beauty. Trading her football boots for Chloé heels and a black Christian Siriano gown, Fowler joined fellow L’Oréal ambassadors such as Kendall Jenner and Helen Mirren for the eighth annual “Walk Your Worth” event, held at Hôtel de Ville in Paris.

While modelling isn’t necessarily on Fowler’s list of potential post-football vocations, she says the experience reinforced the importance of “women just celebrating each other … lifting each other up in general and admiring what another woman is doing, rather than feeling envy”.

Still Fowler, who signed up to the cosmetics brand in 2024, admits to having been nervous about stepping so far outside her comfort zone, even though, as a teenager, she staged mock fashion parades at home. She tells Sunday Life that Canadian model Coco Rocha gave her “a lot of helpful tips for the runway”.

“If [something] scares you, just show up as yourself and do it anyway, you know? Like, who cares? It’s your life, and if you have that opportunity, you’re getting it because you’re worthy,” she says, paraphrasing L’Oréal’s “Because You’re Worth It” tag line.

Her injury has forced Fowler to lean into the idea of finding confidence off the soccer pitch. “I’ve been questioning myself: ‘Why is it that I feel most confident in my work? Why don’t I feel like that in general?’” This has led to her using the time to tune in to the way her appearance, including dressing up and putting on make-up, unlocks a different kind of inner strength.

“The way you feel about yourself when you look in a mirror affects the way you feel about yourself when you’re with others,” says Fowler. “If I’m feeling down, even without realising it, I’ll just get up from the couch and go change my outfit, do my skincare routine. And then I’m like, ‘OK, I feel better.’”

With more time on her hands, Fowler’s been working on several projects in the mental-health space, including a motivational book for young adults called Bloom, which comes out in November.

“When I was a teenager, I struggled with finding how I fit in and trying to keep up with all the beauty standards that were out there, and what people looked like on social media,” she says. “I know today’s probably even worse for teenagers.”

In Fowler, young women have a great role model who also loves hiking, arts and crafts, and shopping for vintage clothing – 80 per cent of her wardrobe is thrifted. Asked what makes her laugh, Fowler doesn’t hesitate. “My friends,” she says, her face lighting up even more, if that’s possible.

Then there’s her high-profile romance with NRL star Nathan Cleary of the Penrith Panthers. Fowler prefers not to discuss her relationship of two years, but shares that one way the two coffee aficionados cope with long separations is by sending each other photos of their home-barista creations.

“I have a full-on make-it-yourself machine,” Fowler says, adding that she loves a flat white, a cortado or, occasionally, a long black. “I am practising [my coffee-making], I am not amazing yet,” she says, adding that “neither of us can do art, but I can almost make a love heart. I’m pretty proud of that.”

Born on Valentine’s Day 2003 to an Irish father, Kevin, and Papua New Guinean mother, Nido, Fowler and her siblings’ soccer prowess – she is the middle child of five – meant the family moved a lot, including a stint in the Netherlands from the age of 11 to 14 (Fowler is fluent in Dutch as a result).

Still, during her childhood, the family faced financial hardship, including housing instability. “It was difficult, but that’s something that’s been a strength of our family,” Fowler said last year.

As she rose through the junior ranks of representative football in Queensland, Fowler sometimes struggled to find relatable role models, naming Brazilian footballer Marta and US gymnast Simone Biles among her heroes.

In 2021, Fowler was at her first Olympics in Tokyo when Biles withdrew for mental health reasons. She says it “connected” her to the seven-times gold medallist’s story even more. “She’s the best in her sport, and she’s on the world stage, but she’s decided to prioritise herself. And I was like, ‘That’s amazing.’”

Fowler adds that her own time in the public eye hasn’t been “a smooth journey”. “I still sometimes get quite overwhelmed. As a teenager, being in the spotlight made me think that I had to be perfect. There were so many people watching me, and I was like, ‘I’m just a kid. I’m supposed to be a role model?’”

After nearly eight years with the Matildas and three with Manchester City – she recently re-signed until 2027 – Fowler says she has learnt to “differentiate between other people’s expectations and what I actually want”.

She adds, “I just want to show people that I’m going to be myself, and live in a way that’s going to make me happy and have the least amount of regret when I eventually retire.”

Still, with her recovery on track – Fowler hopes to be fit by January, or “whenever it feels right” – the r-word isn’t on the horizon. If anything, being off the playing field for so long has rekindled her love for the sport.

“I didn’t think I was gonna miss kicking the ball as much as I did,” she says. “I can feel my legs twitching because they want to go … I feel like I’m getting this part of me back again, which is really nice.”

For Fowler, getting back on the pitch is as much about achieving her own goals as furthering the women’s game. While women’s football has grown quickly in recent years – especially in Australia, which co-hosted the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup, she says there’s more work to do.

For example, she says, in some corners of sport, women are still facing “a lot of degrading comments”. For Fowler herself, a “growth point” has been “learning how to deal with that and speak up and be like, ‘I’m not OK with you saying it like that. You wouldn’t say that to a man.’”

We’ve gone 10 minutes over our allocated interview time, and while Fowler’s management is yet to give me the wind-up, I know it’s coming, so I quickly ask her about the future. This is when she brings up the farmhouse dream.

“Being in the spotlight has made me really crave privacy,” she says. “My sporting dream was to go to the Olympics, and I’ve been lucky enough to do that, and the only other dream I’ve ever had was to start a family.

“I get motivated and want to do really well in my career because of wanting to start a family and wanting to do that in the best way I can. I’m really looking forward to that one day.”

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