Last season, Leeds United Women’s sharpshooter scored 25 goals. Having tasted success, Jess Rousseau is now hungry for more…
“I don’t even feel like I have played football for that long,” remarkably admits last campaign’s Player of the Season Jess Rousseau. “Basically, I played rugby until about 13 and then I ended up switching over to football.”
The striker, whose insatiable appetite for goals last season saw her score 25 goals across all competitions in just 27 matches, earned her the Player of the Season accolade.
At the awards ceremony, in front of hundreds watching on, she heaped all the praise on her teammates for helping her to succeed. Yet there is much more to the somewhat reserved, though clearly confident, 21-year-old forward’s game than she let on.
“I think there is a part of my play where I feel like I drifted off at the back end of the season of holding the ball up. So, one of my smaller objectives will be getting better at holding the ball up as a nine, making it stick and choosing the right path after that.”
The day after a game, while some might be taking it easy after the toils of high-level sport, the former Lincoln City player is watching a video of her display, analysing every action with a fine-tooth comb as she constantly looks for ways she can improve. Her own harshest critic, in her own words.
“I think it is really important,” Jess continues. “If you don’t look back, it is really hard to take that step forward. There might be something that I think I am doing really well in the game, but it is not until you look back, you think, ‘Oh, I could do this a little bit better’.”
That constant drive to improve is what made Rousseau swap playing locally for her hometown club Lincoln City, to travelling to West Yorkshire to join the Whites. That near four-hour round trip is a commute she makes three times a week, continuing her football education and striving for more success.
“When I spoke with the people here they had great plans, showing everything, like the training structure and the facilities. That made the choice for me development-wise in football easier. For me I just want to get better and keep learning, so I had to take that step and come across.
“When it comes to winter nights, it is a long drive to train in the cold and the dark. But the thing is, football is a break. I enjoy it. I love playing football, so for me, it is part and parcel of it. It has just become part of my normal routine.”
Routine is a thing to live by for the striker, especially last campaign, where finding the back of the net became almost inevitable, with Rousseau deployed as a sole striker where, at times, there was a huge expectation on her to supply the goals.
A big emphasis on recruitment came from Simon Wood’s Whites over the summer, welcoming a host of impressive talents from the division above as Leeds look to take their first step back to scaling the heights of yesteryear.
One of those new additions saw a return to Thorp Arch for former striker Amy Woodruff, which has brought around a change in formation for the side, deploying both forwards together and reducing the reliance on Rousseau in front of goal.
“It is really good,” she quickly adds. “It is important to have support, and Amy and myself are on the same wavelength. We play in similar sort of styles. I know where Amy is going to be, she knows where I am going to be. It has strengthened us up the top.”
As women’s football continues its meteoric rise, a player who only swapped the rugby ball for the football just eight years ago, says seeing young girls, and boys, on the touchline with her name printed on the back of their shirts is something she can barely believe.
“It is amazing, that support that you get, which at previous clubs we might not necessarily have had, and to see those young kids and families coming down and supporting. The game is definitely getting bigger and it is going in the right direction, so it is nice to be part of the players helping change the way that people look at women’s football. Knowing that I am inspiring kids is nice.”
Jess’ earliest steps in the sport came with local side Boston United, before moving to Lincoln City where she made an instant impact, picking up the Player of the Season accolade in her time with the Imps.
A member of the fire service by trade, the next generations watching Leeds United aren’t the only ones she is looking to inspire, she laughs, admitting for a once-rugby mad family, football now comes first in the Rousseau household.
“I have kind of set the path, because I am the oldest of three and now everyone else plays football!”
We speak with Rousseau having picked up a slight knock in the victory over Durham Cestria, where her late brace, including a stunning 30-yard strike with her weaker foot, saw the Whites pick up three vital FA WNL points.
The striker would play through the pain barrier and grab her third goal of the season in the subsequent victory over Doncaster Rovers Belles, before missing two matches to work her way back to full fitness.
“I had just started to settle back into the season again but then I picked up a little injury, so it is like a start and a stop for me, which is a bit frustrating,” she admits.
“It is hard when you are not, like – from last year, obviously – hitting the heights every weekend and being quite consistent. It has been a little bit tough to settle into that. I was hoping that those goals would have been that start of something. But, unfortunately, I have got injured. Now I am putting in the rehab work to get things in place to come back even stronger.”
Despite the injury, Rousseau is still setting lofty ambitions for the season ahead and beyond in the battle for the league title.
“I aim for around 20 goals a season, 20 or above is my objective. Whether I will meet that this year, I don’t know. It will be a bit of a push, but it is a good challenge. Again, though, obviously the main thing for me now is always picking up the three points as a team, it is about getting promoted.
“I would love to help take Leeds to that next step and be in the third tier. We are doing whatever we need to do necessary to get to that point.”
Rousseau and her teammates continue their FA WNL Division One North campaign with a Yorkshire derby against Barnsley FC at the Bannister Prentice Stadium on Sunday. Read our match preview HERE.
