Faye Gaskin pulls the strings for St Helens. In a season that end on Sunday with Saints, on home turf, facing York Valkyrie in the Women’s Super League Grand Final, she has been the magic in the middle, her playmaking skills at scrum-half earning a nomination as Woman of Steel in Tuesday’s Rugby League Awards.

It is an amazing achievement, especially given the messy fractured kneecap she was told had ended her career three years ago and still causes “pain which shoots up my knee every time I kick the ball”. But Sunday will be Gaskin’s first Grand Final and her last game. At 32, her priority is a family of her own.

“I was really poorly after the World Cup in 2018 and I lost one of my ovaries. They recommended I try to have a family before I was 35,” she says. “You’ve got to give it your best shot, you can’t be going through the crazy cycles of IVF while you’re still playing rugby – that’s just a waste of money.”

Gaskin is bushy tailed, squeezing in half an hour to talk in her Warrington living room before heading off to work as a PE teacher at the local sixth form college. “I could cry every time I think about it,” she says of her last match in a career that has stretched from the amateur flatlands to the first foothills of professionalism, a fascinating kernel of women’s sport’s evolution.

Born and bred in Widnes, Gaskin was seven when she started playing at West Bank Bears. The only girl on the team, she would cover her hair with a skull cap so no one realised – she didn’t want anyone going easy on her in a tackle.

Watching Widnes was an essential part of family life. “I’d go in my full kit with my boots. I’d tell my mum: ‘If anyone gets injured I can go on.’ And she’d be like: ‘You keep dreaming.’ My family don’t have loads of money to be getting new boots but when I used to get them with a Widnes kit for my birthday it was like I was the richest kid in the world.”

A talented sportswoman, she had trials for Liverpool, with GB athletics coming up on the outside. At 14, her PE teacher sat her down and told her that something had to give.

“I was like: ‘I’ll play rugby for England one day,’ and I remember her going: ‘You’re picking rugby?’ I remember her face. ‘Faye, you’re kidding me.’

It wasn’t the easy choice. When she left mixed rugby at about 12 it was a struggle to find a girls’ team as she moved from Chorley to Leigh East to Batley Heath, all the time her mum, Elaine, the designated driver. “I ate a lot of my tea on the motorway.”

She was called up by England in 2015 and played in the World Cup in 2017. Already, it seems a different era. “In 2015, we paid £800 to go on an England tour to France. Next year the girls are off to Vegas to play a Test against Australia, that journey is insane.”

Women’s Super League was formed in 2017. St Helens joined it and Gaskin joined them. She emerged insanely fit from Covid after a back-garden blitz, but then came that injury celebrating a try in the Challenge Cup final in 2021.

“I was about to go down to surgery and asked: ‘When will I be back playing?’ and the surgeon said: ‘You’ll never play again,’ and I was like: ‘What?’ He said: ‘You won’t play again, Faye. If we save your knee this surgery has been a success.’ And then he walked off. I said to the guy who was taking me down: ‘Is he kidding?’ Then – boof – I was knocked out.”

She defied all the odds to get back, despite still walking with a limp and continued pain in that invaluable right leg. The mental side of recovery was tough, too – she isn’t built to sit and watch.

“I was around the girls still but you don’t feel part of it … They were so successful, that was kind of the heartbreak.”

Gaskin dragged herself back in 2023, though not at full beam, decided she would get properly fit and play one more year. “It’s hard when you’ve revolved around sport, when your whole family’s life has revolved around you. It’s such a selfish career. I’ve got a niece, three nephews and I need to help at home.”

So, in the year she’s been paid to play for the first time – and playing the best rugby of her career – Gaskin is stepping away.

Whatever comes next, she will be throwing herself at it, no quarter given.