Paris prep and late-night studying: A day in the life of football star Steph Catley.

Want to know how celebrities really spend their days? Yep, us too. In Mamamia’s A Day in the Life series, fascinating people share everything from what they eat for breakfast to their pre-bedtime rituals.

This week, we find out what life is like for Matildas’ football star Steph Catley. 

Steph is sitting in the lounge room of her London home, which she shares with her partner and fellow footballer Dean Bouzanis, when she calls Mamamia. 

With the countdown to the Paris Olympics on, Steph says "it feels amazing" that the Matildas have officially qualified. "For so long we've been in this mode of qualifying for Paris. We went through the whole process without conceding a goal. We scored lots of goals. So we felt like we were putting ourselves in a really good position, but it's nice now that we can say, ‘Okay, we're going to Paris!’ We can focus on that and what we want to achieve and prepare for another major tournament."

When it comes to prep, Steph’s constantly honing her skills playing for Arsenal in the Women’s Super League, along with fellow Matildas teammates Caitlin Foord and Kyra Cooney-Cross. 

A typical day of training starts when her alarm goes off at 7.40am. "Then, I'm really getting up after one snooze at about 7.45," she smiles. How many times she hits snooze "depends on how big the training and football week's been, but at the moment I am snoozing a little more than usual, just trying to catch up on as much sleep as I can."

As a self-confessed night owl, she says her morning shower is "the key to me waking up and being alive."

With so many athletes spouting the benefits of taking cold showers, does this mean she’s into them too?

Steph admits to Mamamia: "I am not."

"I have tried them in the past, but I think the thing that gets me out of bed here in England, because it's so cold, is the idea of a warm shower, so I don't punish myself with a cold shower. But my partner swears by them. He absolutely loves cold showers and he often leaves the tap cold and then I get the blast. So technically, by default, I guess I'm doing a cold shower," the Melbourne native laughs. 

Steph with her fiancé, Dean. Image: Supplied.

Her morning continues with her skincare routine. Steph keeps it simple by cleansing and then moisturising with a new favourite. "I love Clarins Multi-Active Jour. It's just a lovely moisturiser, it's lightweight, it smells amazing, and it feels like it leaves me moisturised throughout the entire day," she says. 

She’s such a massive fan of Clarins’ new Multi-Active range – which features an anti-ageing niacinamide and cell-renewing sea holly extract to help reduce the signs of stress and fatigue on the skin – that she’s become an ambassador for the iconic skincare brand. And when it comes to getting this night owl going in the morning, the bergamot scent of the day cream with notes of lily and rose has been formulated to help boost the mood for an AM win. 

Steph Catley and her work with Clarins. Image: Supplied.

Next up, Steph drives to training, but not without making a coffee stop along the way. "Here in the UK, I'm just going for a flat. I also like an Americano sometimes. It depends how much of a coffee hit I need," she says. 

Once at the grounds, she gets into her kit and sees the physios at 9am if she "has any niggles". Then it’s breakfast with the girls where "you get all your jibber jabber out of the way", before a meeting on game tactics. It’s 10.30am by the time the team heads to the gym to do their activation exercises and 11am when they’re on the field for football training.

"Also depending on the day of the week, we'll either have an uppers gym session or a lowers gym session."

Wait… uppers and lowers?

"Sorry, I'm talking in football lingo," Steph laughs. "An upper body strength or a lower body strength session. Then we’ll go shower, have lunch, sometimes have an afternoon meeting, and then we’re wrapped up by around 3pm-ish and I’m home to my doggie [goldendoodle Calvin]."

@stephcatley7 Floof doof 🥁😂 #goldendoodle #dogsoftiktok ♬ original sound - Benji 💙

It’s this time of the day that she devotes to totally switching off from football. 

"Making sure I'm refreshed and happy off the field always helps me on the field," Steph says. "Other than going for walks with Calvin, I like to go out for meals in London with my partner, I read a lot, go for coffee with friends and FaceTime home. 

"Studying is a good way for me to switch off too. When I'm in the books and I'm working on an assessment, it fully takes me away from the footballer I am. It gets my brain active and, yeah, there's no better feeling than submitting an assessment after you've worked hard on it."

She’s currently on a break this semester from completing her Bachelor of Education, but if she were studying today, she says she’d be hitting the books at night.

"I think I function better in the night if I'm studying. It’s when I’m most effective," she says.

This means her pre-bedtime ritual is focused on turning her mind off: it involves stretching, reading ("My brain's often working overtime at night and I struggle to really relax and wind down", which is why reading helps), and a skincare routine – the scent of which puts her in the mood for bed at 11.30pm.

Just like with the Clarins Multi-Active day cream, the team at Clarins collaborated with Japanese perfumer Takasago and universities renowned for their research on stress and sleep to come up with the perfect fragrance for the night cream. That’s why – along with key ingredients to hydrate, plump and bring luminosity back to skin – Clarins Multi-Active Nuit has notes of rose, jasmine and iris and tones of musk, cedar and amber tones, to promote rest.

"The smell actually reminds me now that it's bedtime," Steph says. “It's become part of my nightly routine that gets me ready for bed and soothes me into, ‘Okay, it's time to sleep.'"

When it comes to rituals, that’s as far as Steph goes – you won’t see her carrying out any pre-game superstitions before a big match.

Steph tells Mamamia: "I'm 30 years old now and I've played football for most of my adult life. When I first started I had lots of pregame rituals. And then, you start to realise slowly that it doesn't matter what you do with these little weird quirks, and if you put one shoe on before the other, you'll win or lose regardless because of so many other factors. So, I've tried to loosen my grip on a lot of that and relieve some of the stress over the years."

Shop Clarins Multi-Active Day Cream and Night Cream, the new Clarins innovation that reduces signs of stress and fatigue on the skin. 

Feature Image: Supplied/Instagram/@stephcatley