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Ella Toone Navigates Grief Through Football
An Empty Chair Looms at Ella Toone’s Upcoming Wedding.
The England and Manchester United midfielder is preparing to walk down the aisle without her father, Nick – the man to whom she dedicates every goal and credits as the “main reason” for her career success.
In a new BBC documentary, “24 Hours with Ella Toone,” she candidly discusses grief and navigating its challenges as a professional athlete, while also honoring her father’s legacy and contributing to the advancement of women’s football for future generations.
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24 Hours with Ella Toone
Toone reflects on the regularity of post-match phone calls from Nick.
He and her mother, Karen, consistently attended Toone’s matches. Nick would also record the games to review them at home before calling his daughter for a “debrief on the whole game.”
“He was just obsessed,” the 26-year-old recalls. “He loved women’s football more than he loved watching the men’s game. He knew all the players, he was passionate about where I was in my career, the team that I had, the way we were playing.”
“He would go into any pub and talk about women’s football and talk about me,” Toone added.
Toone emphasizes her father’s pivotal role as “the driving force” behind her football career, driving her across the country for club matches and traveling internationally for England games.
“Me and Dad were all about football; that was our thing that we had together,” she reveals. “He was probably one of the first people that really saw potential in me.”
The day after Toone scored in England’s 2-1 victory over Germany in the 2022 European Championship final, she was unaware that her father had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer, having only disclosed the diagnosis to his wife and brother.
“He didn’t want anyone worrying about him,” she explains. “He wasn’t well throughout the tournament. I’m finding out more and more about it now that he’s not here.”
She only learned of his illness the day after her Manchester United team won the FA Cup final at Wembley in May 2024.
“I feel like every time I won something, something bad came after,” she says.
Nick passed away three days before his 60th birthday – five days after Toone turned 25 – in September 2024. The following day, she returned to training.
“I went straight back into football because I knew that’s what he would have wanted,” she says.
“I started the first game at Old Trafford; it was really difficult, but I felt like that’s what I needed to do in that moment. I needed to play; I couldn’t just be sat around moping about, thinking about it all the time. I knew he would have been there and been watching.”
Toone recalls bonding with her late father, Nick – whom she describes as “the most competitive person ever” – over football.
However, Toone admits that she wasn’t truly processing her grief until a calf injury in November forced her to take a break.
“I think it was my body telling me to stop before I would have had a mental breakdown,” she recalls.
After two months away from the game, during which Toone sought counseling and vacationed in Dubai, she returned for Manchester United’s 7-0 FA Cup victory over West Brom in January.
She scored with a stunning long-range strike – which she describes as “decent” but was later voted her team’s goal of the season – and pointed to the sky in tribute, marking her first goal since Nick’s death.
“Obviously, every goal I score now, I dedicate to Dad, but that just felt like a relief,” says Toone.
“The first few months of playing, I was putting so much pressure on myself. I wanted to score for him. I wasn’t letting myself relax and enjoy the game; I was trying to be the person that my family could rely on, on the pitch.”
She says that the enforced time off the pitch was also beneficial for her wider family and friends, who found it difficult watching her because matchdays had always been “their time with Dad.”
Toone dedicates all her goals to her father.
Toone acknowledges that she wouldn’t have gotten through the past couple of years without her fiancé, Joe Bunney, who was a “rock” to her family while also dealing with his own grief for a man Toone describes as his “bestie.”
The pair were so close that Bunney took on Nick’s dream of creating a girls’ football academy when the former Rochdale player’s own career came to an end in 2025.
Bunney, who played at various lower league clubs after his career at Bolton Wanderers was derailed in 2019 when he suffered injuries in a car crash just a week after signing for them, says: “Ella and her dad said, ‘let’s do an academy’.”
“I was coming towards the end of my career; I had a little bit more time, so I said, ‘I’ll put all my eggs in this basket and try and build something’.”
They established the ET7 Academy, where he says “standards tend to go through the roof” when Toone comes to watch.
“Nick absolutely loved it, seeing these young girls come through and playing football. It was almost like he was reliving Ella’s life again,” adds Bunney. “That’s where my passion came from.”
Toone is “really proud” of her fiancé and says he “sacrifices a lot.”
“The academy brought us together, even though it is very stressful,” she adds. “I think his hard work goes unnoticed but definitely not by me.”
“Setting up the academy is part of Dad’s legacy. He loved being part of something that he knew would help young girls have opportunities.”
Alessia Russo (right) will be Toone’s maid of honor – a year after they won a second European Championship together.
Toone confided in Bunney that she would never get married or have children after her father passed away.
“I look back and I think, ‘Why would I not do that?’. He (Dad) would love me to do those things,” she says.
And so, Toone is in full swing for her July wedding, where there will be “a lot of mixed emotions.”
She has asked her uncle Dan to walk her down the aisle and will place a cap on what would have been her father’s chair at the wedding.
And despite the tables of footballers and her England teammate Alessia Russo serving as maid of honor, Toone is “trying to keep the day away from football.”
“Anything related to football songs is banned,” explains Bunney, 32. “All her family singing United songs and my mates singing [Manchester] City songs, it’s not happening.”
Depending on where Gareth Southgate’s England team finish in the group stages of the men’s World Cup, they may potentially be playing on the day of the wedding.
“Hopefully that doesn’t take away from the day,” adds Toone.
“I am obsessed with football, but I don’t think I’ll be watching it on my wedding day.”
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, you can visit BBC Action Line.
Watch 24 Hours with Ella Toone on BBC iPlayer
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