Hannah Cain: 'Leicester helped me regain my love for football'

It was a normal sunny afternoon at Belvoir Drive for Leicester City forward Hannah Cain until she heard a sickening pop while warming up in what was supposed to be her last rehab session for her ACL injury.

She sat on the grass hoping for the best. Maybe it was just her scar tissue. That’ll be it. No big problem, she said quietly, trying to convince herself.

But it wasn’t that. It was much worse. Hannah had just torn her hamstring tendon.

Cain, 23, was devastated. After five months of solitary gym work, she was back at stage one. It seemed like it had all been for nothing. She even considered whether she wanted to return. This was the lowest she'd ever felt.

After growing up 26 miles from Sheffield in Arksey, the 23-year-old striker played for Sheffield United’s Centre of Excellence. After five years of playing with a local boys’ team Cain joined the girls’ setup because at the time there weren’t many girls’ teams around.

Cain progressed from the Centre of Excellence and joined Sheffield FC in the WSL 2 in 2016. She remained there for two years and in her final season she picked up the supporters’ player of the year award. Cain later joined Everton in 2018 and signed her first full-time professional contract.

Cain joined Leicester in 2020, with an existing foot injury. She was also going through a hard time mentally, to the point where she’d fallen out of love with football.

“I got my toe injury at Everton,” she says “I was playing on my foot for a year and ended up needing surgery. It was a career-ending operation.

“You don’t want to get up, you think ‘how is this pain ever going to go away’, then I decided I didn’t really want to play. Leicester gave me everything I needed at the time to help me enjoy my football again. If it wasn’t for that I probably wouldn’t be playing now, so I am grateful for that.”

Cain started thinking more about her Welsh heritage, as her mum and grandad are both from Wales, and made her first senior debut for the Welsh team in October 2021. At youth level she played for both England and Wales at the same time, but she was eventually forced to pick between the two.

“I decided to stay with England at the time,” she says. “I felt there were more opportunities at England to go to the Euros. It was a really difficult decision at the time and my only regret in life is probably not staying with Wales from the start.”

Cain didn't enjoy the England camps, she had just picked up a toe injury at Everton, so this was a really difficult time for her. She didn't even want to play football again.

After Hannah signed for Leicester she received a phone call from Wales manager, Gemma Grainger. Cain was asked about her thoughts of playing international football when, at the time, Cain wasn’t sure she wanted to play any kind of football.

“Gemma invited me down to a game, I think it was their first qualifying game for the World Cup campaign,” Cain says. “They won 6-0. The day after I rang Gemma, and I was like ‘yeah I want to play’.”

Then the worst thing that could happen to a footballer happened to Cain – she tore her ACL. She underwent surgery and was bedbound for five days afterwards. After nine months out, Cain carried out her final assessments to determine whether she could return to training. It should have been a positive day, the end of a grim era. Instead, everything went from bad to worse.

“I was opening out into a jog and I tore my hamstring tendon, I’ve never heard anything like it,” she says. “It was quite a big tear in the hamstring tendon where I’d just had my graft. I would’ve been back after nine months, but I’ve ended up being back after 14. The last four to five months have probably been the hardest, you go through the stages of ‘do I even want to bother coming back?’”

Cain faces a tough season ahead with Leicester. Her side have lost all nine of their matches played and a relegation battle looks almost certain.

But after fighting off relegation last season, she’s confident. “The girls are all in good spirits, we know that we’ll be alright," Cain says. "We know that we can put in performances and we’ll get the results.”

Cain’s message to aspiring young footballers? “Enjoyment is probably the biggest factor that you need,” she says. “Remember that in football the highs are really high, but the lows are very low and never forget why you started.”