INTERVIEW: Ella Morris and the Mental Side of ACL Recovery

Last year, when England lifted the Euros trophy for a second time, Ella Morris wasn’t on the pitch or even in the stadium. She was on her couch, with her knee in a brace, relearning how to walk, watching a team she had been right on the brink of joining. In the football world, we talk a lot about the physical anatomy of an ACL injury and the milestones that come with the grueling recovery. But a crucial step in the rehabilitation process that isn’t discussed enough is the mental one, the shock of having a season snatched away, the ‘FOMO’ of watching teammates succeed without you and the daily work of staying motivated through months of lonely gym sessions and small wins.

Few players embody that mental side of recovery better than Spurs defender Ella Morris. She had just fought her way back into the Tottenham squad and earned her first ever senior England call-up when everything changed. “The feeling of doing my ACL on that [England] camp on the second training session was awful. I won’t lie; I was in a bad place mentally.”

Credit; England Football

The timing made the blow feel even crueller. “It’s the highest high, to have got there and knowing that was the camp before the Euros, to then be sat immobile on your sofa watching that same squad go on and win a Euros,” she says. “It’s really tough mentally, knowing that there was a small chance that I could have made that squad and been part of that success.”

In those first weeks, the most important work wasn’t a rehab exercise but a change in perspective. “The PFA and Spurs were brilliant, with our therapists (in-house) and external therapy through the PFA,” Morris explains. “It helped me reframe my mindset into, ‘Okay, what can I do to get better?”

That reshaping became the thread running through her entire comeback. “As an athlete, it’s just as much about your mental strength as it is your physical strength,” she says. “If you can deal with challenges mentally, then it also helps you physically. If your body feels better, your mind feels better. You can make clearer decisions.”

Photo Credit; Getty Images

Physically, the ACL lay-off became an opportunity as much as an ordeal. With matches off the table, Ella and the staff at Spurs could focus on a different kind of progress. “You can ask my (strength and conditioning) staff, they’d say you use that time now to put on a lot of strength,” she laughs. “So my tests are showing that I’m stronger. I actually ended up coming back fitter than I was before.”

After the injury, she was back at the training ground almost immediately and for a long stretch, never really stopped. “I was at the training ground the day after that I did my knee, and I stayed throughout the whole summer,” she explains. “I didn’t have as much of a Christmas break either, so I was basically in for two seasons back to back.” “By the end of the season, where I got some minutes towards the end, I was like, mentally I need a break.”

Through all of this, the mental support at Spurs wasn’t an optional extra, it was central to her recovery. Morris is clear about how much a psychologist inside the building can change the reality of long-term rehab. “I think all of us would speak so highly of our psychologist last season,” she says. “It’s so important. The mental side can sometimes get looked over. But so many of us girls will talk about if you’re not in a good place mentally, then it’s going to reflect on the pitch.”

Part of the impact is simply accessibility and knowing there is someone you can see at any time on an ordinary day. “You can literally just pop in and be like, ‘Can I have a chat? Ten minutes?’ And you just feel like a weight’s been lifted off your shoulders,” she says. “To be able to just pass a little bit of that burden onto someone else that knows how to reshape that back to you in a positive way – it’s so massive.” When you add that to the external therapist she saw through the PFA, you get a picture of a player whose mindset was being worked on as deliberately as her knee and who now talks about that with the same matter-of-factness as a gym session.

Photo Credit; Getty Images

If the ACL forced Morris to confront the mental impact of injury, it also changed how she relates to her body day to day. She talks about her first ACL, in lockdown, as a turning point in understanding how her body feels and what those signals mean. “If I feel a little bit of a niggle… before, I’m the type of person [to] be like, ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll push through. I want to work as hard as I can.’ Whereas now, understanding my body more, I can be like, ‘Okay, maybe I just need to manage myself a little bit.” Admitting that she needs to pull back doesn’t come naturally. “Which is hard for me mentally because I want to give everything,” she adds. “But sometimes you do just have to take that step back and trust your body [is] telling you something.”

Now, with her return to the pitch and a fresh season ahead Morris talks about being excited to “play for the Ella last season that didn’t get the chance.” After everything, the couch, the brace, the FOMO, it’s a reminder that the real story of an ACL comeback in women’s football isn’t just about a ligament healing. It’s about who you become while you’re waiting to step back onto the pitch.