Football is no longer a "passion" for Matildas star Mary Fowler, who admits she doesn't "feel bad" about being sidelined with a serious knee injury.
Fowler ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in her knee playing for her English club Manchester City last month, leaving the 22-year-old playmaker in doubt for next year's AFC Women's Asian Cup.
Despite crying after being told she had torn her ACL, Fowler admitted the sadness didn't last.
"Getting injured … in my head I pull myself up at times (thinking) `am I supposed to feel more sh*t about this, about what's happened'," she told the Keegan and Company podcast.
"But I actually don't feel bad about it."
Instead, Fowler has found some "positives" in being sidelined, as there are things outside of football she is "more passionate about".
"Obviously, I enjoy playing football but I wouldn't say it's my passion," she said.
"The way I look at football is I go there and I have to put my best in, and our job is to win games, so as long as I'm ticking the boxes of doing my job then I'm fine with that … but once I leave the club I'm leaving work, I don't have to think about it, which is different to a lot of the other girls, how they think about it.
"I play it because there are a lot of things I enjoy about it. I really enjoy travelling, being with my teammates, the people that I've met through football, but if I finished it tomorrow I probably wouldn't have any regrets."
That wasn't always the case for Fowler, who previously put more pressure on herself to succeed.
"I have pictures from when I played under-20s national team and I have permanent marker on my arm (saying) 'I will win'," she said.
"I was so big on what I would feed my mind. I would wake up early in the morning, do my push-ups, I would watch video of the opposition or myself and just analyse it.
"I had a lot of success doing it like that, but then when I went to France (to play for Montpellier) and I wasn't really enjoying being there, with the football I was (thinking) 'why am I putting so much time into this when I don't enjoy it' and that's where things started to change where I started to allow myself to look at other things I might enjoy off the field.
"It just got to the point where having all that structure actually made me play worse because I felt like I was over-thinking it, and now I just feel so chill on the field, I feel like I'm in my own little world because I don't care.
"I think it's helped me dealing with pressure because now I don't think about it because I genuinely don't care.
"If I make a mistake, I'm either going to laugh or I'm going to just forget about it in a second."
Minus Fowler, the Matildas meet Argentina on Friday night in Melbourne and again next Monday in Canberra.
NCA NewsWire
