Bristol City Women manager Tanya Oxtoby: 'My world caved in when my brother died but I'm now enjoying life again' 

Bristol City Women manager Tanya Oxtoby - Bristol City Women manager Tanya Oxtoby
Bristol City Women manager Tanya Oxtoby  Credit: Bristol City

On Christmas eve, Bristol City Women manager Tanya Oxtoby uploaded a picture of her older brother Michael to Instagram and typed: “Today will never be the same without you. You will forever be my hero.”

Two Christmases earlier, Michael had been diagnosed with bone cancer. The sarcoma on his hip killed him in March 2018, four months before Australian-born Oxtoby became City manager. Born with a chromosome disorder, Michael could form sounds but not speech: Oxtoby “could always hear him at my games - he’d be yelling and I’d think, there he is.”

He had been limping but couldn’t say why. “I was saying, ‘You’re not 50 Cent - stop walking like that!’” Oxtoby remembers. She flew home once she learned the cancer was terminal. Then Michael fell and his femur drove through his hip, leaving him wheelchair-bound and, later, bedridden.

“Anyone will tell you grief comes in waves,” she says. “You’re completely fine, and then you’ll just be at the wheel and start crying. You’re not a robot. The last two or three months were really horrific for him. He’s my biggest fan and my inspiration every day. I miss him a lot.”

Oxtoby nurses a mug of coffee in a cafe near City’s training base as she recounts the journey that has taken her from Wickham, with a population just shy of 2,000, to Bristol, via boarding school, a psychology degree and jobs in the Australian government combating mental illness in Indigenous youth. At 36, she is more like a big sister to a squad with an average age of 22, and her fingerprints cover a side benefitting from the human touch of its Renaissance woman. Despite a budget five times smaller than some sides, City are on track for their best-ever points finish in the Women’s Super League and have twice this season held Manchester City to draws.

The average age of Oxtoby's Bristol City team is 22 - The average age of Oxtoby's Bristol City team is 22
The average age of Oxtoby's Bristol City team is 22 Credit: Bristol City

The youngest eleven players share club houses - two groups of four and a three. “The one with the three is the worry,” Oxtoby winces. “They’re the ones burning holes in mixing bowls. I had a phonecall once from that house at eight at night, and all I got was, ‘Shall I call 999?’ I was like, what’s happened? ‘I’ve set the fire alarm off - do I call 999?’ ‘Well, is it on fire?’ ‘No - just the alarm.’ ‘Then don’t call 999. Unplug the toaster and take the toast out.’ ‘Can’t I stick a knife in?’ ‘No!’ That’s the level we’re dealing with.”

City’s limited resources demand a more creative approach from Oxtoby. In pre-season, the squad visited cows on a dairy farm so they could learn about their sponsors, Yeo Valley, and “what the people who help them do”. On Halloween, they met with Lee Johnson’s side to navigate a zombie maze at Avon Valley, with each house in costume so her players can “see each other not as footballers, but people.” The proudest moment came at a local Church where the squad prepared Christmas lunch for lonely parishioners. A player said to her afterwards: “Christmas it actually a really lonely time - we’re lucky we have someone.”

“We always say to our group, ‘No matter what the barriers are, you have the best job in the world,’” Oxtoby says. “‘There’s people who are not as lucky as we are. Remember that in everything we do.’ Sometimes, as footballers, you’re quite lonely. You’ve only got each other. We want to create better people.”

The daughter of an Aboriginal mother and English father, Oxtoby grew up amid Australian red soil. “Completely different to Bristol. No camping spots with massive big fish over here. When I first moved here, people were like, ‘Let’s go fishing!’ And then they pulled out these little ones, what we use for bait back home. Fishing over here is a whole different thing.”

Oxtoby’s more intrepid exploits stalled abruptly when she turned 12 and her parents suggested she apply for boarding school in Perth to broaden her horizons. She promptly won a football scholarship while her parents remained in Wickham to care for Michael.

“I was like, ‘Don’t send me there!’ I was kicking and screaming.” She lasted just over a week. “It was horrible. I rang my dad crying every single day. The amount of people at high school was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I ate my lunch in the toilet, just because I couldn’t deal with that many people. I went to doing whatever I wanted to having to be in my room by a certain time. To be removed from my family set up and to be told just to get on with things, not have that freedom - it was definitely one of the hardest periods of my life.

Players met with dairy farmers in light of their Yeo Valley sponsors - Players met with dairy farmers in light of their Yeo Valley sponsors
Players met with dairy farmers in light of their Yeo Valley sponsors Credit: Bristol City

“My dad thought, I’m not having this. He flew down and took me out.” Oxtoby remained in Perth, living with an aunt and wearing her Indigenous heritage proudly as she adjusted to life in Australia’s fourth-largest city. “There was a lot of, ‘You don’t look Aboriginal. You don’t have the nose of an Aboriginal person.’ It was quite difficult. But being Aboriginal is not about the way you look - it’s about your attachment to your culture, your family, your land. I had a bit of a gap where I didn’t really feel attached to anybody.”

Only after an orientation course through the Aboriginal side of the University of West Australia did Oxtoby “feel like I’m home now. That helped me to kind of re-identify with myself and to feel really comfortable in my skin again.”

Bristol has offered similar healing. “When I first came in, [after Michael’s death], I was not in a great place. But the girls - we are a family. They were instrumental in getting through that period. Because whenever you’re a little bit down, the phone rings, it’s about a toaster and you think, I’ve got a good job here. I’m doing alright.”

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