Chelcee Grimes: the Dua Lipa songwriter vying for FA Cup success

Chelcee Grimes has crafted lyrics for Kylie, Kesha and Olly Murs, written on Dua Lipa's chart topping 2020 album Future Nostalgia and accidentally/iconically wiped out Mark Noble at the London Stadium in front of 54,000 people.

On Sunday, she'll be lacing up her boots at FC United of Manchester's Broadhurst Park, as Merseyrail FC attempt to navigate through the FA Cup first round.

The singer-songwriter has juggled football alongside her music career since being inspired to return to the game after the 2015 World Cup. She has plied her trade for the tier four Merseyrail since 2021, following spells with Fulham and Tranmere.

"Take your pick, take your pick," Grimes tells 90min with a laugh, when asked if being in the public eye results in being on the receiving end of any extra stick on the football pitch.

"A few weeks ago I was having a bit of a wrestle with the centre back, and the ball's come out to me and I've just hit it straight at the keeper. And she's turned round to me and said: 'it's a good job you're better at song writing than football'.

"And I was like: 'that's amazing you know who I am because I haven't got a clue who you are...' I take it with a pinch of salt, and I actually kind of like it because it means people know who I am!" 

Merseyrail and FC United of Manchester will both benefit from the hike in Women's FA Cup prize money that was announced in March. The winners of Sunday's first round matches will receive £6,000; victory at the same stage last season would have seen teams pocket just £850.

"This isn't just a game for us, this is actually like funding for this season and for maybe next season," Grimes adds. "And it gets us a lot of nice things that people maybe take for granted when I was at bigger clubs that haven't filtered down to the National League yet.

"That takes us from maybe not having a coach for one game to maybe getting like a luxury travel day down. It's almost like a bushtucker trial..." 

Grimes is a Liverpool native, and played for the academies of both the red and blue side of the city - the Everton youth system also produced Lionesses Nikita Parris, Alex Greenwood and Toni Duggan.

With women's football not a professional career path when Grimes left school, she opted to instead commit her efforts to a music career.

The 30-year-old draws similarities between the buzz of scoring a goal and writing the lyric that's been on the tip of your tongue all day, and credits the traits forged through her footballing youth as pivotal to her musical success.

"People think music and football it's worlds apart, but it's really not," she adds. "You've got to have a tenacity about you, especially being a girl in football, especially when I started playing it wasn't for the money and you played because you loved it, no matter how many people told you it wasn't for girls. You've got to have the bit between your teeth, and it's the same in the music industry

"I 100% believe if I hadn't played football first, and that built characteristics in me that I needed to be successful in other areas, I probably wouldn't have gone on to do what I've done."

Merseyrail take their name from the network rail service that the trio of club founders worked for when they formed in 2013. The initial aim was to develop female football opportunities in Liverpool. In the space of nine years, the club have climbed to the National League Division One North; a league that largely consists of teams attached to established mens' clubs, including Newcastle and Leeds.

The general assumption is that being connected to and backed by a top men's club is the recipe for success in English women's club football. Although the likes of Durham and Lewes in the Championship are doing their best to dispel this hypothesis, Reading are currently the only WSL team not connected to a Premier League club.

However for Grimes and a number of her Merseyrail teammates, the refreshing lack of affiliation to a men's side was what drew them to the club.

"It was our own place: we weren't a men's team, we weren't shared by the men's team, we weren't playing second fiddle, and I think that was quite attractive," the 30-year-old explains. "A lot of us have played at big clubs, and unfortunately you still are second to the men's team in some way. It's attractive; this is for you, this is your team.

"We expected to maybe battle it out in the league below the National League for a bit, but we ended up getting promoted pretty early on and then the jump into the National League has been a bit different because we don't have the top tier facilities that maybe some of the other teams do.

"It's a battle but we love it. The goal now is just to stay in the league, build from it, get to the FA Cup final and there we go..."

Merseyrail take on FC United of Manchester in the First Round Proper of the Vitality Women's FA Cup at 1pm on Sunday 13th November at Broadhurst Park.