Shaw, the latest guest on our Official Manchester City podcast, spoke to presenters George Kelsey and Paul Dickov at the City Football Academy about her formative years in the game as a student at both Eastern Florida State College and University of Tennessee in the United States.
During her time with the Tennessee Volunteers, she was converted from a midfielder to a forward by her coach Brian Pensky.
The decision paid off as she scored 27 goals in 35 appearances for the Southeastern Conference side although she wasn’t convinced when the switch was first mooted.
“From freshman to junior, I was a midfielder. But as I was going into my senior year, the player that was playing striker, she got a professional contract so we didn’t have a striker.
“So in the summer of my senior year, my coach was like ‘okay, we think you need to play closer to the goal’ and I said ‘attacking midfielder, it feels I’m already there’. And he said ‘no, forward’.
“I thought ‘I’ve never played there before, I don’t think I’m the one for the job’.
“And then he told me not to worry about it and that we’d work on it.
“Every day before training and after training, we’d do finishing, finishing, finishing.
“In my sleep, I would think about finishing. That’s how much we would work on it.”
The rest as they say is history.
Shaw moved to France with Bordeaux in June 2019 on a two-year contract.
The 26-year-old scored 10 times in 15 appearances in her first season at the club before COVID-19 put a stop to that 2019/20 campaign.
Shaw didn’t rest on her laurels and scored 24 times in 21 appearances in all competitions in 2020/21 before joining City on a three-year deal in June 2021.
Grabbing 19 goals in her debut season at City, the Jamaican went on to new levels in 2022/23 - scoring 31 goals in 30 games before signing a new deal to keep her here until 2026.
As the curtain fell on the term, she was unsurprisingly named City Women’s Player of the Year after also being crowned CONCACAF Player of the Year for her goalscoring exploits and her inspirational acts on and off the pitch for Jamaica.
She’s got high hopes for 2023/24 too and has already bagged nine goals in just ten WSL games, including two hat-tricks in the last three matches - trebles against Tottenham and Everton.
The new edition of the Official Manchester City podcast, featuring Khadija ‘Bunny’ Shaw will be released today at 17:00 (UK).
