Just five days after Aston Villa conceded a last-gasp Sam Kerr goal against Chelsea in their Women’s Super League clash in March 2022, Anna Patten was in hospital being diagnosed with glandular fever.
The doctor casually added that the Aston Villa defender could not do contact sport for six to eight weeks — glandular fever causes the spleen to swell and playing contact sport can risk it rupturing. At this detail, Patten started to get emotional.
“It was a little throwaway comment,” she tells the Athletic. “I said, ‘Wait, rewind!’.
“They questioned, ‘What’s going on here? Will that impact you?’.
“I said, ‘It’s my job, it’s my job. I play football’.”
Patten had suffered tonsillitis the previous year and experienced similar symptoms in the build-up to the Chelsea game. She missed training the following week, but when the antibiotics were ineffective, Patten realised it was something more serious.
Patten was forced to curtail her 2021-22 season, which she was spending on loan at Aston Villa from Arsenal. She returned to her family home and spent eight weeks recovering: watching television, listening to podcasts and going on (slow) walks.
“It was really tough because when you hurt your knee you’re in and you’re rehabbing, but there was nothing I…
