When the start of 2023 arrived, Ashley Arquette was playing football at home in New Zealand - a life in London the furthest thing from her mind.

Fast forward four months and the 25-year-old was trialling with Brentford Women, eventually earning selection in the squad in August and now holding her spot as a regular first-team member.

Her journey to west London has been long and covered different parts of the globe, with stops in Japan and New Zealand part of the trek. Now, Brentford is home.

“At the start of this year I had no intentions of coming to England whatsoever, I went to Australia in March, to the Gold Coast,” said Arquette.

“But I’ve always wanted to live in Europe… England wasn’t the choice but all of a sudden somewhere in April I said to dad ‘I’m ready to go, I need to go’ and the easiest way was getting a youth mobility visa.

“Dad and I searched teams that night online, we emailed a few and Brentford was the one that got back to me so I got the flight, trialled for three weeks, got in, went back to New Zealand, quit my job, said goodbye to my mates and six weeks later moved here.”

Living abroad is nothing new for Arquette, who was born in Japan, where her mother is from.

At three months of age, Arquette and her family moved to her father’s home country of New Zealand, more specifically Hawke’s Bay, on the east coast of the north island. It was there that her love of football started.

“My dad used to play. When I was younger, he would train every Thursday at Havelock North Wanderers AFC and I would go down every Thursday with him and just hang around with the other kids and cause mischief,” said Arquette.

“Dad said ‘Do you want to try and play football?’, but obviously back then there wasn’t really many female teams, so I played my first year when I was about nine with the guys, I was the only girl.

“I played with the guys most of the time and then my dad actually created and under-14 girls’ team, we got quite a few players from high school to come and join and we were actually really good, we were beating the guys.”

From there Arquette flourished and continued to progress up the ranks, graduating into what is now known as the Wellington Phoenix Football Academy and representing New Zealand at the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in 2014.

Japan was next, Arquette joining up with Osaka Speranza in the Nadeshiko League while on a gap year following high school.

“I was the youngest in the team in the top league of Japanese women’s football and I was in Osaka Speranza and Osaka’s where I was born,” said Arquette.

“I kind of chose the path to really find out who I am. I hadn’t actually lived in Japan, so it was a great way to reconnect with my own culture and actually understand my mum a lot more.

“I did a whole year, it was really difficult, then I decided to stay and study in Japan and I studied art/science.

“There wasn’t a women’s team [at the university], so I just played football with the guys for fun and actually took a break from it because I actually fell out of love with football for a bit.”

Arquette returned to New Zealand once Covid hit and started to find her love for football again.

Some summer league games with her old club turned into playing a season with them and before she knew it, she was bound for the New Zealand Women’s National League.

Now, she’s a part of the Bees family, plying her trade with Karleigh Osborne’s side as they search for promotion come the end of the season. She concedes she has had to adjust her mentality playing at Brentford.

“It has been a journey, I think more mentally I would say. In New Zealand I wasn’t training to this level, I didn’t have the support that they have here, so it has been a mentality switch to perform at most trainings and you need your fitness to be up here,” said Arquette.

“I would never say no to it [playing overseas], but I love London so much at this moment in time of my life, so I would love to stay based here for the moment.”