The Climb #7 – Phase Complete
The Climb Chapters
It started feeling strange long before anyone said anything out loud.
Training ran smoothly. Sessions finished on time. Players asked sensible questions. Problems still existed, but they arrived one at a time instead of all at once.
That should have felt like success.
Instead, it felt like a warning.
By the time Europe rolled around, Barry Town United knew how to behave.
Slightly outmatched on paper, but still calm.
Still organised, still awkward to play against.
They won matches they weren’t meant to win.
Häcken in the UWCL showed them the pace.
Brann in the Europa Cup showed them the control.
Not brutally. Not loudly. Just enough to make the point.
Kat stood on the touchline after the second Brann game with her hands in her pockets, watching a team that hadn’t panicked but hadn’t been able to change the story either.
Shape was fine.
Effort was fine.
It just wasn’t enough.
Domestically, the league tightened without much drama.
Top spot came and went like someone quietly rearranging furniture.
The Wrexham draw should have been comfortable. It wasn’t. Seventeen shots for, five against, and still it took Sophie Hernández in the eighty-ninth minute to stop it slipping away.
Kat remembered the relief more than the celebration.
A goal that prevented a problem rather than created momentum.
Briton Ferry was worse.
Not because of the scoreline – 1–2 happens – but because of how it felt.
One mistake. One missed chance. Control slipping.
The door stayed locked afterwards.
No theatrics – just standards being re-established.
The response came immediately.
Connah’s Quay were taken apart.
Bangor didn’t get a say.
Wrexham were overwhelmed in the Welsh Trophy like it was nothing.
Six goals.
No drama.
No apology.
By December, Barry weren’t reacting anymore – they were setting terms.
Training grew quieter. Meetings got shorter. Players stopped needing reassurance and started offering solutions.
The football felt repeatable.
The 1–0 at TNS confirmed it.
No panic.
No chaos.
Just Hernández again, calmly ending the discussion.
That was the moment Kat realised she wasn’t building anymore.
She was maintaining.
And that’s when leaving became possible.
The message from Sweden didn’t make a show of itself.
IFK Göteborg.
An interview.
Questions, not promises. About pressure. About walking into a club that remembered what success felt like and expected it back quickly. About fixing things without breaking them.
Kat talked about Europe and limits. About nights where control wasn’t enough. About Briton Ferry and the door that stayed locked afterwards. About players who stopped needing reassurance and started offering answers.
Training carried on.
Meetings were held.
The inbox stayed quiet just long enough to be unsettling.
Then the reply arrived.
Short. Direct.
They wanted her.
And suddenly the season replayed itself in fragments.
Rain at Wrexham.
The locked door after Briton Ferry.
Late goals.
Quiet authority.
Barry hadn’t finished.
But it didn’t need her in the same way anymore.
The squad meeting felt heavier than expected.
No music. No chatter.
She told them she was leaving.
No gasps. Just stillness.
She told them she wasn’t going because things had gone wrong.
She was going because they hadn’t.
That night, Kat walked the pitch alone.
Barry hadn’t been a footnote.
It had been the proving ground.
She stood at the centre circle a moment longer than necessary.
Not for closure.
For memory.
The car pulled out of the car park and joined the road.
The ground slipped out of view behind, replaced by streetlights and memories.
Barry wasn’t something Kat was leaving behind.
It was something she’d finished.
And the next part of the journey waited.
