Heartbreaking personal sacrifice Mackenzie Arnold made to get to the top of her game: 'It just comes with the job'

When Mackenzie Arnold's nana died, she was on the other side of the planet on a bus full of rowdy Matildas players heading to training.

She didn't even know what had happened until her phone rang. It was her mum.

"Something about the unusual tone of Mum's voice tipped me off before she even told me. I was in tears as soon as she broke the news," Mackenzie wrote in her new memoir, Macca: My Story So Far.

READ MORE: No one was ever supposed to see this footage of Mackenzie Arnold

Hearing her mum's trembling voice from thousands of kilometres away, a part of Mackenzie wanted to throw in the towel and go home.

Instead, she laced up her boots and hit the field.

"Being a professional athlete in any sport, you miss out on a lot," Mackenzie tells 9honey of that tough moment in 2021.

"You know what you're signing up for when you get into it … I guess it's the price you pay. It just comes with the job."

Despite growing up on the Gold Coast and starting her career in Canberra, Mackenzie's been bouncing between clubs in Europe, the UK and US since 2018, when she took her career international.

Heading overseas opened her up to plenty of exciting opportunities and helped her become the star player she is today, but it also meant missing out on huge family milestones and heartbreaking moments back home in Australia.

It's a trade-off Mackenzie has come to accept, on one condition: that her family promise never to keep what's going on at home a secret, even if it will upset her.

"I know they're trying to protect me," Mackenzie says, but she'd never wants to be kept in the dark.

"They know I worry about them a lot when I'm away ... so they try and be as open as they can with me."

Missing out on pivotal family moments, and just family time in general, is one of the biggest personal sacrifices the 30-year-old has made in her career and it's one she reflects on deeply in Macca.

The memoir also touches on the sacrifices her parents made when Mackenzie was just a tomboy from the Gold Coast, including letters from dad Steve Arnold about her early foray into football, which he and wife Leah Arnold supported fully.

"When you actually properly sit down and think about how much time and effort they sacrificed to take me to training every day and do all of that stuff, it was actually quite special," she says of all her parents did for her.

"It just made me a little bit more grateful for the whole journey, to be honest. And for them."

READ MORE: Mackenzie Arnold reveals how the tide turned after Australia's Matildas-mania

Big brother Sam Arnold also contributed a few missives for Macca and when Mackenzie read them, she could hardly believe the words he'd written.

Not because Sam had said anything scandalous or embarrassing. In fact, it was the complete opposite – what he'd written was shockingly tender.

"We're never usually that nice to each other," Mackenzie confesses.

Like most Australian siblings, she and Sam grew up taking the piss out of each other and she expected a few cheeky jabs in his letters for the memoir.

Instead, he was startlingly earnest, especially when it came to the role he played in helping Mackenzie get a life-changing diagnosis in 2022 after years of denial.

As a child, Sam had considerable hearing loss and used hearing aids. Perhaps that's why he picked up on her hearing issues first.

"I think it was in her late teenage years that I noticed Kenz would say, 'Huh?' a fair bit," he wrote for Macca.

"It was almost one of those things that Mum or Dad would correct, as if it was a problem with her manners. But from that point on, it got progressively more obvious."

Matildas teammates like Caitlin Foord also noticed Mackenzie's hearing issues as an adult, but she shut them down any time they brought it up.

"She'd just say she wasn't deaf and did not want to wear hearing aids. I guess she was in denial," Foord wrote for Macca.

IN PICTURES: All the stylish arrivals at the Dally M Medal

Finally, after struggling to read lips during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mackenzie made a long-distance call home to Sam and asked for his help.

With his support, she was quickly diagnosed with high-frequency hearing loss, and got her first set of hearing aids soon after.

"He's helped me more than I could have ever imagined," Mackenzie tells 9honey of her big brother.

"Without him, I would have struggled. I didn't have any reassurance from anyone, or anyone that had really had that journey."

Today, their bond is deeper than ever and Mackenzie's grateful to know Sam and the rest of her family are always only a call away as she starts her new career at the Portland Thorns FC.

And while she doesn't see a return to Aussie soil in her near future, the beloved Matildas goalkeeper hasn't ruled it out entirely.

"Towards the very end of my career, I would love to come home to the Gold Coast and play back home for sure."

Macca: My Story So Far is available from Penguin Books Australia on October 8. Pre-order here.

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.