Ella Toon: Lioness and Man Utd midfielder on grief, football and her marriage

Toon knew that hours after every match, he would always get a phone call from Nick.

She and her mother, Karen, always came to watch Toon’s matches, but Nick would also record them on TV so she could watch them differently when she got home before calling her daughter to “debrief her about the whole game.”

“He was just obsessed,” the 26-year-old said. “He loved women’s football more than watching the men’s. He knew all the players, where I was in my career, the team I had, he was passionate about the way we were playing.

“He would go into any pub and talk about women’s football and talk about me.”

Toon added his father was the “driving force” behind his football, taking him out of the country for club matches and traveling abroad for England games.

“Me and dad were about football, that was our thing that we were together,” she reveals. “He was probably one of the first people who really saw potential in me.”

The day after Tonne scored in England’s 2-1 win over Germany in the 2022 European Championship final, he had no idea his father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer as he only told his wife and brother.

“He didn’t want anyone to worry about him,” she explains. “He wasn’t good throughout the tournament. I’m finding out more about it now that he’s not here.”

It wasn’t until the day after his Manchester United team won the FA Cup final at Wembley in May 2024 that he found out he was ill.

“I think every time I’ve won something, something bad has come after it,” she says.

Nick died three days before his 60th birthday – after Tone turned 25 – in September 2024. He returned to training the next day.

“I went straight back to football because I knew that’s what he would want,” he says.

“I started the first game at Old Trafford, it was really difficult, but I felt that’s what I needed to do at that moment. I needed to play, I can’t sit around thinking about it all the time. I knew he would be there and watch.”