“People need to know what happened,” Laura Holden says as she reflects on her difficult two years at Aberdeen when injury changed the course of her life. “It’s not all sunshine and roses. There are demons that just get brushed under the carpet without having the light shone on them.”
It has taken the Swindon Town midfielder time and a change of club to process everything that happened in Scotland. Holden joined the Dons in August 2023, determined to establish herself as a key player at one of the biggest clubs in the Scottish Women’s Premier League. But just six matches and 31 minutes into the first season, she ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament away at Hibernian.
The long way back to fitness was laid bare immediately, but Holden was unaware then that she would find navigating her relationship with the club her biggest test. Holden claims she was neglected by Aberdeen and members of its coaching and physiotherapy team, causing her mental health to deteriorate at an alarming rate and compel her, in 2025, to leave the life she had built in Scotland behind.
Holden now feels obligated to speak out about her experience. In her latter months at the club, she spoke to the Professional Footballers’ Association, which offered her counselling sessions. Holden fears that other players are going through similar experiences in women’s football.
“The rehab mentally destroyed me without me even realising it,” she says. “I was so naive to the fact that I was struggling, but when you think about it and you start to strip things back, I was depressed to the point where I did not even know it. That’s how scary it was. The elements throughout the rehab and the people I was dealing with was just not a good experience at all.”
Aberdeen have been contacted by the Guardian and sent a list of questions regarding Holden’s recovery but did not want to comment.
The club initially funded a scan but then wanted Holden to join the NHS waiting list. Holden, who felt this could delay her surgery for months and sideline her for much of her two-year deal, opted to pay for the operation herself. At the time, she did not want to jeopardise her chances of remaining at Aberdeen beyond her contract and decided against setting up a GoFundMe – a decision she now regrets.
“I thought I was doing the right thing by not tarring the club with the fact that they wouldn’t support one of their women’s players,” she says. The operation cost around £8,000.
Holden asked Aberdeen to stop paying her wages for playing football partly so that the club could pay for the surgery directly – an offer which she says was refused. “My salary across the 18 months that I was injured for would have just covered it, if not more,” she says. “The support from the club just wasn’t there, which I was really surprised by.”
In addition Holden feels she was not supported appropriately by Aberdeen through her rehab, including by the club’s women’s team physio. Holden claims that when she had started to walk again, the physio handed her a rehabilitation programme to follow and “that was it”.
Holden adds that she did not have any weekly check-ins or many targets to hit in her recovery. Instead, she says she was regularly told: “Your programme is in your book.” She says she constantly had to ask for advice, which made her feel like a burden. “It got to the point where I was apprehensive to approach this person, because I felt like I was the problem. I think that was the worst part.”
Holden kept these feelings to herself. “I didn’t really open up to anyone on the team,” she says. “I was worried that if it got back to certain people it would impact even further what I was experiencing throughout my rehab.”
Tensions reached a boiling point in the autumn of 2024 when Holden says she felt ready to return to training with the ball but claims she was repeatedly denied by the physio, who said she was not fit enough. Holden felt that these were excuses rather than an accurate assessment of where she was in terms of fitness.
“Then there was one session,” Holden remembers, “she said that I couldn’t progress until I stopped limping, and I just blew up. We had a massive row about it outside on the pitch. All of the players heard it.” Holden says she got herself “into a bit of a state” where “I was crying so much I couldn’t even speak. Words weren’t even coming out of my mouth.”
In October 2024 Aberdeen appointed a new coach in Scott Booth and, at the time, she was beginning to join in with training sessions. “I felt like a little kid at Christmas. I was able to kick a ball again, I was able to tackle people, it was everything that I wanted for so long.”
A few sessions into her return to training, Holden says Booth told her that he wanted her to go on loan to another club. She was in disbelief. “I was thinking: ‘What world are we living in? I’ve literally just come back from an ACL injury. I haven’t even had a full month for proper training and you want me to go out on loan? I’m not even ready to play. I felt like he’d just written me off before even seeing me play.”
After 543 days out injured, Holden eventually made her return to the pitch as a substitute against St Johnstone – a 30-second cameo at the end of a 4-1 victory. She would not play for Aberdeen again. Holden says she was left out of matchday squads by Booth on account of her fitness, despite the manager previously suggesting that she would go out on loan.
Holden had wanted to stay at Aberdeen beyond the end of her contract in June 2025. She loved where she lived, her job in the club shop and playing football, “but the injury and coming back changed everything. When [Booth] came in, I was thinking I’m not wanted here, so what is the point even giving it the time of day?
“I was so focused on getting physically fit, I didn’t take into consideration how I was actually feeling about it all. I didn’t let myself believe that I was struggling. I think that’s what the main issue was, but it got to the point where I was so done. I was so ready to just drop it all and quit.”
Holden was encouraged to speak to Aberdeen’s HR department, who she met in April 2025. She says she told them she had felt neglected and that other players were treated better and asked them to investigate. “I felt like what loyalties do I have? I didn’t want it to continue,” she says. “I knew that someone was going to investigate it, but whether they did or not, I don’t know.”
In June 2025, Holden joined Swindon. Even though she has left behind both good and bad memories of Aberdeen, moving on has been difficult. As of January 2026, Holden says she has not heard anything from the club regarding her complaint. “I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else,” she says.
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