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Those behind the scenes at Wayne Rooney's Street Striker arrive at a Powerleague pitch in the suburbs of North London. It's the height of summer in 2009 and hundreds of talented young footballers are desperate to impress onlooking scouts.
The quest to find Britain's most talented street footballer has officially begun.
Just a few months ago, Travis Beckford, a 16-year-old from West London, inspired a generation when he was crowned the winner of series one. After kicking balls into car windows and dribbling through tyres, the teenager was invited to attend trials at Leeds United in the weeks after his on-screen success.
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Street Striker was now considered the biggest reality programme in England and as a result of its unprecedented success, tens of thousands of hopefuls entered to feature in the show's second series.
As organisers watched on from the sidelines, one confident teenager stood out from the rest.
Ashleigh Goddard, a 17-year-old attacking midfielder from Edgware, was one of the only girls to attend the trials on that warm day in North London.
After progressing through Arsenal's prestigious academy system before representing England at U15s and U17s level, she decided to apply for the competition thanks to the persistence of her father, who had seen a pop-up advert for the show online.
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"He left it open on the computer for me knowing I was using it next." she tells SPORTbible.
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Her decision to enter Wayne Rooney's Street Striker was the start of a remarkable journey in the competition. Playing alongside mostly male counterparts, Ashleigh impressed in multiple technical challenges during the trial day, including crossbar challenges and shooting drills.
She was eventually chosen to appear on the programme alongside 24 other hopefuls.
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"I turned up and almost the entirety of the competition was boys. At the end of the day, they asked for my details and invited me to the next round. I was told I had impressed a lot of people. Things just went from there."
Goddard wasn't the only girl to make a real statement in the trials. A total of seven girls made it into the competition, impressing a "very nice" Rooney who always encouraged the contestants to relax and do their best.
The fact that almost a third of the contestants were female was a huge step for women's football.
Ten years ago, the overall popularity of the women's game was nowhere near as prominent as it is today but looking back, Wayne Rooney's Street Striker played an important role in its rise.
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It gave girls the invaluable opportunity to impress in front of an average viewership of 600,000 people a week – something that Rooney himself was delighted about.
"It's great that so many girls have made it on." Rooney said during filming. "It shows just how strong women's and girls football is at the moment. It's great to see so many female players with such strong street football talent. I hope the bigger contingent of girls on the show inspires more to get out there and play football."
Despite Ashleigh's overwhelming success on screen, where she eventually went on to win the entire programme and secure tickets to the 2010 World Cup final in South Africa, the teenager was struggling with issues off the field.
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She readily admits to struggling with certain aspects of being in the spotlight.
"I wasn't prepared for what was going to come my way." she told us. "I received hundreds if not thousands of comments. The majority were positive but a lot were negative. I was expecting the typical 'she won because she is a girl' and 'it was fixed' but I wasn't prepared for the personal comments like 'she's fat', 'ugly' and worse.
"It was rough. I was young, and it took time to get over. Being on television was weird. I do have mixed feelings about it.
"It all escalated quickly. I was suddenly holding up a Coca-Cola trophy but ultimately, it was the positive comments that outweighed the negative that got me through and I sincerely appreciate all the people who reached out with positivity.
"I am proud to see women's football now thriving. It has grown immensely over that past ten years, which is something I hope continues. I'm glad to be in the game while its happening but all those years ago, it wasn't as well supported.
"I was 17 years old and competing in a male dominated environment."
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Ashleigh's confidence took a big hit but she had built a reputation as one of the most talented street footballers in the country.
Success on the show undoubtedly served her well in the coming months. In fact, the teenager was offered a full soccer scholarship in the USA shortly after Wayne Rooney's Street Striker ended.
"I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship to play for DePaul University in Chicago." she said.
"It had always been a dream of mine to play football in America. I picked up the connection through one of my coaches at the time and it just went from there. I loved it at DePaul, the coaches and Athletic Department in particular were incredible.
"I was there for four years and spent two years as captain. I'm very proud of all we accomplished."
After graduating from DePaul university, the attacking midfielder decided it was time to return to England, where she joined Championship side Reading on a short term deal before signing permanently for FA Women's Championship side London Bees.
Ashleigh was happy but an opportunity to stop juggling life as a semi-professional football with being a secondary school PE teacher would soon come her way. In August 2018, she left her hometown to join FC Nordsjaelland in Denmark.
"I became a full-time footballer for the first time." she said. "It was a fantastic experience. There were small language barriers but generally all the staff and players spoke great English which made the transition of moving to a country where English wasn't their first language a lot easier.
"I would equate our team to a top women's championship team in England."
After a successful five month spell in Scandinavia, the ever-improving Goddard decided to take another huge risk by taking a seven-hour plane journey to Cyprus.
A move to Apollon Ladies FC beckoned; one of the biggest clubs in the country. It was a decision she described as another "fantastic experience" after they qualified for a historic Champions League spot.
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From hitting balls into bins while Wayne Rooney watched from the sidelines, to qualifying for the biggest competition in women's football; the 27-year-old has continued to prove her doubters wrong, and her next move put Ashleigh's remarkable journey into more perspective.
The attacking midfielder joined FA Women's Championship side Crystal Palace in August 2019 – a club that were aiming to gain promotion to the Women's Super League.
"I had a few friends at the club prior to signing, who explained that they were very disappointed with how they did last season, and that they planned on making some big changes. " she told us. "They sounded ambitious and I like that a lot as I'm an ambitious person. It didn't take much convincing once I met the staff and the team."
Ten years after lifting the iconic Coca-Cola trophy as half a million people watched from the comfort of their home, Goddard was named captain in Palace's 3-2 win against Lewes.
But months later, her life would change forever following a seemingly-innocuous incident during a game against London City.
"I went to receive the ball from a throw-in and I think her forearm hit me in the back of the head or the neck and I was unconscious for a few seconds," she told BBC Sport last year.
Ashleigh suffered with a 'small lingering headache' following the concussion, so in January 2020, she went to the hospital to get it checked out. The scan highlighted a brain arteriovenous malformation, which is a tangle of abnormal and poorly developed blood vessels connecting arteries to veins.
Two months later, things escalated further when she was told that the brain arteriovenous malformation had caused a brain aneurysm that required surgery.
"They said it would burst at some point in my lifetime," she said. "They couldn't say if it would be tomorrow or in 20 years, but that I needed treatment. They said it would be either fatal or that it would cause a life-changing disability."
Goddard barely kicked a ball after that moment and would soon leave Crystal Palace. A year later, she went for surgery to suppress the aneurysm but as she opened her eyes after going under the knife, things went from bad to worse. She had suffered a stroke.
The chances of a stroke occurring on the operating table are between 5 and 10%.
"I woke up and I couldn't move my left side, I was paralysed," she said. "I couldn't talk, my face had dropped, my arm couldn't do the most basic of movements. They told me something was wrong but I would have never guessed a stroke. It was the worst thing other than dying that could have happened."
Despite the stroke – and being told she may never get her movement back – Goddard was determined to get back on her feet.
She had to re-learn how to walk and talk again after the whole left-hand side had become paralysed but remarkably, six months after her operation, the 31-year-old was back playing for the London Bees.
Fast-forward to now, and Ashleigh recently joined Women's National League Division One side AFC Wimbledon Women ahead of the 2023/24 campaign.
"I had to learn to walk again, I had to learn how to use a knife and fork again and when it came to football I had to learn it all again," she recalls. "I did thousands of reps of each type of pass and each touch and eventually things just started to get easier."
Featured Image Credit: Sky One/Wayne Rooney's Street StrikerTopics: Wayne Rooney, Manchester United, Sky Sports
