In the final countdown to the Tokyo Games, our Olympic Bonds series talks to the Football Ferns No.1 goalkeeper, Erin Nayler, who's indebted to her dad for teaching her how to dive.
It all began when Erin Nayler and her dad, Mark, would drag the family’s mattresses off their beds and out onto the back lawn of their home in Whenuapai, on the outskirts of Auckland.
Nayler was 10 years old, an aspiring footballer who’d been put in goal for half a game every week because no one else in her Lynn Avon club team wanted to do it. You know how the story goes.
She decided she wanted to take goalkeeping seriously. She’d already broken her wrist bravely saving a goal.
“I did save it, didn’t I?” she turns and asks her dad, during a rare visit home.
“Yeah, you saved it. And you played out the whole game. We didn’t realise it was broken until afterwards.” She was one tough little girl.
Back then, she asked her dad – one of her two biggest supporters and her toughest critic – to help her learn to dive without landing awkwardly, so she wouldn’t hurt herself again.
“Out came all the mattresses on the grass out the back, and I taught her how to dive without fear,” Mark Nayler recalls. “We progressively pulled the mattresses away till she was just diving on grass.”
It worked. Over the next 19 years, Nayler never broke another bone. And her mum, Diane, never complained about grass-stained mattresses.
It wasn’t only Nayler who was leaping and lunging onto bedding in the backyard. Her brothers, Hayden and Cameron, joined in, and they eventually became goalkeepers too (their youngest sister, Katie, didn't want a bar of it).
“I like to claim I was first, right Dad?” Nayler laughs. “I was always trying to dive higher than Hayden. He was very good at it, too. It was always very competitive between us.
“We were all tall, so maybe that’s why we all ended up in goal.” Nayler is 1.76m (5ft 9in) before she stretches out her long levers. “Or maybe we weren’t just very good in the field, now that I think about it…”
But neither of the boys would reach the lofty heights their sister has. In an international career spanning eight years, she’s played 71 games for the Football Ferns, and tended goal for professional club sides in the United States, France and England.
Tokyo will be her second Olympics, kicking off tomorrow night when the Football Ferns play Australia's Matildas, two days before the opening ceremony.
Her dad remembers spotting Nayler’s abilities soon after she joined in at her brothers’ training sessions, when she was eight.
“The biggest thing I recognised with Erin was her very, very quick reflexes, and for a keeper that’s a fundamental skill to have. Thankfully, she’s still got them,” he says.
“That’s what sets keepers apart - if they're quick to react, like a racquet sport player. It's really key."
Mark Nayler was never a goalkeeper himself. He spent his football playing days in defence. He knew enough, though, to teach his daughter the basics – first as her school coach, then as a sort-of sideline analyst. “I was able to give her constructive criticism,” he says.
“Yeah, he’s been good - and bad - at times,” Nayler says. “As a kid, I was always asking him for advice, and he would give me very critical advice. Sometimes I wouldn’t want to talk to him after the game.
“But most of the time Dad was really helpful. He helped me to refine parts of my game at a young age, and taught me to really enjoy the game and believe in my goals.”
She knows he’d still be standing behind the goal, urging her on, if he could be.
While Mark was playing the hard-nosed parent, wife Diane (pictured above with their three eldest children) was the softer one.
She was Nayler's No.1 fan, cheering on her daughter at the 2015 World Cup in Canada and the 2016 Rio Olympics. She’d get up at 3am with Mark to watch Nayler play in goal for French club FC Girondins de Bordeaux.
But, sadly, Diane died in April 2018. Just six weeks before Nayler played for the Football Ferns in rare home game with Japan in Wellington - a game her mum would have loved to see her play.
“Just so you know, Dad is definitely the tough parent,” Nayler says. “Mum would be very upset about me going away to play overseas; she’d always be wanting me to come home. But it’s been great having the balance of them both.”
Mark Nayler says he now tries to be both in Diane’s absence.
“I am the person that I am, but trying to be the person that Diane was isn't easy. I have struggled with that at times,” he says. "But that’s just life isn’t?
For the past four years, Nayler has only been able to make fleeting visits back home, typically only a smattering of days here and there. Her most recent trip was last month, when she returned to train with the Football Ferns before the squad was named for Tokyo. It was the first time she’d been back to New Zealand for a year.
Nayler keeps in touch with her dad regularly through online messaging and video calls. “Thank God for technology,” Mark says.
He tries to keep up with his daughter’s games, though there wasn’t a lot to watch this season - she got to play just one game for the English Women’s Super League club she was contracted to, Reading.
While she spent almost all of a frustrating season on the bench, she was able to focus on her training building up to these Olympics.
She’s now looking for a new professional club side and would be keen to stay on this side of the Equator – maybe playing in Australia’s W-League (especially if Wellington Phoenix can get a women’s side together) - in the run up to the 2023 World Cup, co-hosted by New Zealand and Australia.
Being that much closer to home would make the Nayler family - and her Kiwi fiancé, Jordan Carter - happy.
When the Football Ferns open New Zealand’s Olympic campaign, playing archrivals Australia in the Tokyo Stadium late Wednesday, there will be no family in the stands. There will, of course, be no-one in the stands in these Covid-stricken Games.
To be honest, Mark Nayler says, he was half-expecting these Olympics to be called off all together.
“But I’ll be up watching every game in the early hours of the morning,” he says. He and Diane went to Japan in 2012, to watch their daughter play in her second U20 World Cup.
At 29, she sees herself as an “old hand” in the Football Ferns squad. “I think as a goalkeeper you can tend to last a bit longer than the other players,” she says.
Now she's passing on all the tips and tricks she's learned through her career in an e-book she wrote last year, entitled The Goalkeepers Handbook.
After the Rio Games, where New Zealand notched up their first win at an Olympic tournament but couldn't get past the group stage, Nayler wasn’t really looking ahead to the next Games. "You can get injured; anything can happen in that time," she says. "But then Tokyo was on my radar, so it’s a real honour to make the Olympic side again, given the year I’ve had with not so much game time. I can't wait."
She isn’t perturbed that the Football Ferns are in the ‘Pool of Death’ with Australia, World Cup champions the United States and 2016 silver medallists, Sweden.
“Any group you get in the Olympics is going to be tough. And as Kiwis we’re always the underdogs and we step up to the challenge,” she says.
“It would be great to get some points off Australia first-up. The US are a different kettle of fish, and if we can nick a point, or maybe even three, that would be incredible. But I believe we can do it.”
Mark Nayler is sure he’ll get the chance to watch his daughter play for the Football Ferns, up close again, in the not-too-far-off future.
“I’d like to see her playing at the next World Cup as well. Just two years away, eh Erin? I’m sure you’ll be in the mix,” he says.
“I’m football mad [he has a soccer-inspired number plate], so I live vicariously through Erin. She’s done very, very well, and I’m immensely proud of her.” As her mum would be too.
* The Football Ferns' opening Olympic match against Australia kicks off on Wednesday 11.30pm (NZ time), and will be live on Sky Sport 8.
