How Toone is navigating grief through football

How Toone is navigating grief through football Image source, Getty ImagesBySophie TrifonoffBBC Sport journalistThere will be an empty chair at Ella Toone's wedding this summer. The England and Manchester United midfielder is preparing to walk down the aisle without her dad Nick - the man she dedicates every goal to and credits as the "main reason" where she is in her career. In a new BBC documentary, 24 Hours with Ella Toone, she opens up on grief and navigating that as a professional athlete, while also ensuring her father's legacy and being a "pioneer for women's football" is now helping the next generation. Toone knew that hours after every match, she would always get a phone call from Nick. He and her mum, Karen, would always come to watch Toone's matches, but Nick also recorded them on TV so he could have another look when he got home before calling his daughter for a "debrief on the whole game". "He was just obsessed," says the 26-year-old. "He loved women's football more than he loved watching the men's game. He knew all the players, he was passionate about where I was in my career, the team that I had, the way we were playing. "He would go into any pub and talk about women's football and talk about me." Toone adds her dad was "the driving force" behind her football, taking her up and down the country for club matches and travelling abroad for England games. "Me and dad were all about football, that was our thing that we had together," she reveals. "He was probably one of the first people that really saw potential in me." Figure caption, 24 Hours with Ella Toone The day after Toone scored in England's 2-1 win over Germany in the 2022 European Championship final, she had no idea her dad had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer as he had only told his wife and brother. "He didn't want anyone worrying about him," she explains. "He wasn't well throughout the tournament. I'm finding out more and more about it now that he's not here." It was not until the day after her Manchester United team won the FA Cup final at Wembley in May 2024 that she learned he was ill. "I feel like every time I won something, something bad came after," she says. Nick died three days before his 60th birthday - five after Toone turned 25 - in September 2024. The following day she was back in training. "I went straight back into football because I knew that's what he would have wanted," she says. "I started the first game at Old Trafford, it was really difficult, but I felt like that's what I needed to do in that moment. I needed to play, I couldn't just be sat around moping about, thinking about it all the time. I knew he would have been there and been watching." Image source, Toone familyImage caption, Toone says she and her late dad Nick - whom she describes as 'the most competitive person ever" - bonded over football But Toone admits she was not really processing her grief at that point and was only able to do so when a calf injury in November forced her to take time off. "I think it was my body telling me to stop before I would have had a mental breakdown," she recalls. After two months away from the game, during which Toone saw a counsellor and took a holiday in Dubai, she returned for Manchester United's 7-0 FA Cup win over West Brom in January. She scored with a stunning long-range strike - which she describes as "decent" but later voted her team's goal of the season - and pointed to the sky in tribute to mark her first goal since Nick's death. "Obviously every goal I score now, I dedicate to dad but that just felt like a relief," says Toone. "The first few months of playing, I was putting on so much pressure on myself. I wanted to score for him. I wasn't letting myself relax and enjoy the game, I was trying to be the person that my family could rely on, on the pitch." She says the enforced time off the pitch had also been good for her wider family and friends. They found it difficult watching her because matchdays had always been "their time with dad". Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Toone dedicates all her goals to her dad Toone says she would not have got through the past couple of years without her fiance Joe Bunney, who was a "rock" to her family while also dealing with his own grief for a man Toone describes as his "bestie". The pair were so close that Bunney took on Nick's dream of creating a girls' football academy when the former Rochdale player's own career came to an end in 2025. Bunney, who played at various lower league clubs after his career at Bolton Wanderers was derailed in 2019 when he suffered injuries in a car crash just a week after signing for them, says: "Ella and her dad said, 'let's do an academy'. "I was coming towards the end of my career, I had a little bit more time so I said, 'I'll put all my eggs in this basket and try and build something'." They set up the ET7 Academy, where he says "standards tend to go through the roof" when Toone comes to watch.

How Toone is navigating grief through football

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