Hayley Ladd drives a modest black four-door that is not so much cluttered as happily lived-in.
With a little over 10 minutes to make a mile-and-a-half journey on foot to the nearest station in time to catch my train, Everton’s Wales international midfielder, as if sensing my predicament, points to the vehicle and asks Emma Watson, the former Manchester United team-mate she still carpools with, to shift her bags in the back.
Ten minutes earlier, Ladd had been answering The Athletic’s questions about why two other former team-mates, Jayde Riviere and Phallon Tullis-Joyce, said they would miss her “swivel hips”. Now, in the driving seat as we zip along curling country lanes, the 31-year-old is the one doing the asking: about hiking spots in Switzerland ahead of the Women’s European Championship there this summer and why I thought it was a good idea to walk along these B-roads.
“Oh, I almost missed the station!” Ladd interjects, before triple-checking my train has not already gone and that she isn’t leaving me stranded in Halewood, on the southern outskirts of Liverpool.
Cynics will claim clear tactics here: a ride for a positive write-up. But ‘transactional’ is not in Ladd’s vocabulary. Insisting a relative stranger get into her car to catch their last train…
