Pealling\u2019s love of football started in her community: \u201cI just grew up playing near my flats, I grew up on a council estate in Hackney,\u201d she says. \u201cI played on Orwell Court just off Pownall Road. <\/p>\n
“Growing up, most of my friends were boys and I had a brother who was five years older than me who I tagged along with, which drove him mad! We just used to play in a square behind our flats every day after school and during the holidays.\u201d<\/p>\n
As she grew up, Pealling\u2019s love of playing football only grew too.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt primary school I played during playtime; there were a couple of other girls who played. I wasn\u2019t allowed to play for the school team and there wasn\u2019t a girls\u2019 team. <\/p>\n
“I went to secondary school at Haggerston and there were a few girls who liked playing football. We just asked our PE teacher if we could play in the sports hall at lunchtime and soon we started playing friendlies against other schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
At that time, Arsenal Ladies had just been formed and had a strong presence in Hackney. <\/p>\n
We were entered into the Metropolitan five-a-side competition as a school team and we qualified so we started playing against girl\u2019s clubs \u2013 I didn\u2019t know there were girl\u2019s clubs around. We played a semi-final at the Britannia Leisure Centre in Hackney, and that\u2019s where Vic Akers saw me. I was 13 and Vic spoke to my parents. Later that week I went to the Marble Halls at Highbury and never looked back!\u201d<\/p>\n
Kirsty\u2019s talent and a lack of organised youth football for girls meant she trained with women more than twice her age from the start. \u201cI went to the first training session and I thought, \u2018I\u2019m not sure about this!\u2019 I was 13 and a lot of the other women were around 30. My mum told me to bide my time.”<\/p>\n Soon she began to feel more at home. \u201cI met Michelle Curley, Sarah Ryan and Sarah Mulligan, who were part of the YTS scheme. They were around 17 or 18 so still older but not that much older. They settled me in. The older players were lovely too.\u201d<\/p>\n Having forged her talents on concrete courts behind her flats and the school hall, Pealling had to learn a more organised form of the sport she loved.<\/p>\n “I hadn\u2019t really played 11-a-side football before, so I was totally naive. I hadn\u2019t even played with the offside rule before! I played a few reserve games for Arsenal on the right wing and in one of the games I scored a hat-trick. <\/p>\n “I came on in an FA Cup game against Friends of Fulham and they had players like Marieanne Spacey and Brenda Sempare. I was on for about 25 minutes and I played a blinder! That was it \u2013 I was in the first team then.\u201d<\/p>\n Manager Vic Akers liked to play with attacking full backs, so Kirsty was \u2013 notionally at least \u2013 moved back, where she started a tradition of roving Arsenal right-backs from Alex Scott right up to Emily Fox and Katie McCabe today.<\/p>\n \u201cPlaying with very attacking full-backs suited me. I was more offensive than defensive but it became natural. We had Clare Wheatley on the other side, then we had Leanne Champ and Mary Philip. All our full-backs were very attacking.\u201d<\/p>\n Pealling largely played in an era of amateurism, but says the success that Arsenal started to experience in the 1990s was down to the level of support shown by the club. \u201cIt was only in my last couple of years we got semi-pro money. <\/p>\n “Before that I paid my subs and contributed. But Arsenal were at the forefront at that time and we had a huge amount of support from the club, from David Dein at board level and Vic \u2013 it was unparalleled the level of support we had. Vic was bus driver, physio, manager \u2013 he did everything!\u201d<\/p>\n Pealling participated in Arsenal\u2019s rise to an era of unrivalled success in the 1990s and she pinpoints promotion to the top flight in 1992 as a pivotal moment in the club\u2019s history where the backing of the club and the talent on the pitch began to combine in a manner that other clubs struggled to replicate.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first started we were getting beaten quite easily by teams like Millwall, but then we won promotion from the National League South to the Premier League.<\/p>\n \u201cThen we were able to attract some players. Debbie Bampton signed for us, Marieanne Spacey joined us, Sian Williams, who was a fantastic player for us \u2013 that level of player started to come in. They had experience too and that gave us the foundation. Our first year in the Premier League we won the treble!\u201d<\/p>\n But Pealling says it wasn\u2019t just talent that set the Arsenal team apart. <\/p>\n \u201cIn every team I played in, I played with some amazing players, but the mentality has always been there. Vic taught us about being humble when we won and respectful when we lost, and he instilled in us the importance of the club and the badge. <\/p>\n “We stayed humble as a group, and I see that in this generation of players. I still see those traditions of the club today.\u201d<\/p>\n Kirsty was a one-club woman. While plenty of players of Pealling\u2019s calibre in that era left for the United States or Sweden, or were tempted by Fulham\u2019s short time as a fully professional club in the early 2000s, Pealling stayed with Arsenal for the duration of her career. <\/p>\n However, she admits there were reasons other than her attachment to Arsenal.<\/p>\n \u201cNot many people know I had a kidney condition since I was nine years old. Vic knew and some of the girls did. I had a transplant in 2015. It was the club I loved, I was happy, I was getting first-team football and winning trophies and I had a great group of friends. I did college and university in London because I wanted to keep playing.<\/p>\n “Football really helped me in terms of my health and probably delayed my transplant until long after I had retired. That was a big factor in me staying and that is probably why I retired at 31.”<\/p>\n She eventually retired in 2006, a decision Kirsty says was expedited by injury.<\/p>\n “It was the club I loved, I was happy, I was getting first-team football and winning trophies and I had a great group of friends.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cI had a great pre-season in the summer of 2005 and I felt great. I played in the Community Shield against Charlton and I did my knee ligaments. I just couldn\u2019t recover from it. I was working full-time, and I didn\u2019t drive; I was coaching in Camden. All the training moved to Hertfordshire University and it became difficult.<\/p>\n \u201cI was finishing at 5pm in Camden and trying to get to Herts for 7pm. It became challenging; I was injured so I wasn\u2019t playing. I said to Vic about halfway through the 2005\/06 season that I thought that was going to be it for me. Your time comes and when it does you need to realise it and step away. I always said from when I was younger that I would stop in my early thirties.\u201d<\/p>\n Pealling also admits that the emergence of 22-year-old right back Alex Scott helped to make her mind up. \u201cAlex was there when she was younger and she was a centre forward, but she went to Birmingham and established herself as a right back and came back to Arsenal.<\/p>\n “She was a kid from Stepney and I could see she was coming through and I didn\u2019t want to go beyond my years. I didn\u2019t want to play reserve team football; I wanted to go out on a high. It was also the final year at Highbury and I had a lovely presentation there. It just felt right. I have no regrets.\u201d<\/p>\n It feels somewhat unjust that Pealling stepped aside on the eve of the club\u2019s most historic season. \u201cI retired the year before they won the Champions League! I was in the stands for the final against Umea.<\/p>\n “I am so happy with the era that I played in \u2013 I wouldn\u2019t change it for the world. I have friends for life and I had an amazing time.\u201d<\/p>\n One of those friends is Emma Hayes, the former Chelsea manager who was the assistant coach for that quadruple-winning team.<\/p>\n \u201cEmma is one of my best mates. She grew up in Camden and we\u2019ve been mates since we were kids. I used to get the 236 bus to Highbury to train at the JVC Centre behind the Clock End, and that\u2019s where I met Emma and we became friends.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m in touch with a lot of the girls. I\u2019m still friends with Yanks (Rachel Yankey), I was at the FIFA Champions Cup a few weeks ago because I was invited by Vic. I reconnected with Michelle Curley (who was Arsenal Ladies\u2019 first professional player alongside Sarah Ryan) and I am meeting her for dinner and drinks tonight! <\/p>\n “I\u2019m still best friends with Emma Byrne and Leanne Champ, Jayne Ludlow, Ciara Grant and Kelley Few. A lot of us are still very close.\u201d<\/p>\n Kirsty is represented on the \u201cRemember Who You Are\u201d wrap on the outside of Emirates Stadium and has been reconnected with the club in recent years.<\/p>\n \u201cI was so touched when I got the email with the design and the club asked my permission to use my image. That was a little out of the blue because I hadn\u2019t had much connection before that.<\/p>\n \u201cThe club reach out a lot now through the alumni network and I have been to a few games as a result of that. Being on the stadium is so nice. It\u2019s something so unexpected that I am really proud of. <\/p>\n “Arsenal was my only club and the record books don\u2019t totally reflect how many appearances I made because there aren\u2019t really any records from 1987 until around 1991. I reckon I won over 30 trophies.\u201d<\/p>\n While the more precise data around Kirsty\u2019s Arsenal goals and appearances are incomplete, she measures her affection for her time at the club in a different way.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t one to keep records, I don\u2019t know how many goals I scored and how many appearances I made but I have some fabulous memories with some fabulous players and I\u2019m very happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Copyright 2026 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kirsty Pealling\u2019s Arsenal legacy is unimpeachable. The Hackney-born full back broke into the first team at the age of 14 and remained a fixture in the starting XI until her … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n