Wednesday was always going to be a big day for New Zealand defender Rebekah Stott.
The 29-year-old was set to step out onto the pitch at Tokyo Stadium for her country’s first match of the Olympic Games, against an Australia side she represented at youth level.
It would be her third Games and the fifth major tournament for a player who has become not only a key member of the Football Ferns ever since her debut in 2012, but one of the most popular too.
That’s what makes the fact she will not be in Japan all the more difficult for her team.
Back in February, Stott was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a rare type of blood cancer. On Wednesday, while New Zealand take to the pitch, she will receive the results from her latest PET scan, which will determine whether she is in complete remission.
“I am fortunate enough to have represented my country at two Olympic Games already, but it doesn’t make the heartbreak of missing out this year, in one of my favourite countries, any easier,” she wrote on her blog, ‘beat it. by Stotty’, earlier this month.
“Nevertheless, I will be the Ferns biggest supporter, as they have supported me, and watch on extremely proud of my team-mates.”
The support is certainly mutual. As Ria Percival and Olivia Chance sit down to talk to Goal about their close friend, they do so holding a shirt with her name on the back. Both have been in the New Zealand team ever since Stott's debut, nine years ago.
“She came into the team and it was like she'd been here for a while,” Percival says, laughing. “I'd say she was quite quiet at first, but once she found her feet, she really was the joker.
“She's always the one giving everyone a laugh and just doing stupid stuff! She's quite a big character, so it is quite hard not having her here.”
“We were both in the same region before she moved to Australia. Then she came back and then we kept her,” Chance says, recalling the early days of their friendship. “We kept her!" Percival echoes. "We're lucky we did.”
Since her diagnosis, the positivity that Stott would be bringing to the team has been channelled in a new direction: through her recovery.
The defender has blogged openly about her journey, in the hope it can help others. She organised a get-together to shave off her hair, too, in order to support the Leukaemia Foundation and has raised over 38,000 Australian dollars (£20,000/$28,000).
“She's also bringing out some bags and they are to help other people that go through a similar diagnosis,” Chance explains.
“It's to try and help someone who goes into hospital. She went through that experience of turning up and she’s like, 'What did I need? I had no idea'.
"We're helping her with that process, trying to get that out, to build ‘beat it. by Stotty’. It's a great way for us to show support.”
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“We can't believe just how strong she's been through the whole thing,” Percival adds. “She's probably one of the strongest people I know. It's also really inspired us.
“When she told us, it was probably one of the hardest things for all of us, but for her and her character, it was just like, 'I'm ready to start this. I'm ready to kick it.' It's that attitude that really is quite – I don't know how to explain it – but it's quite special.”
“There were tears from the team and she was the strong one in that meeting,” Chance remembers. “Right now, it's probably the hardest time for her, because everyone loves an Olympics. For her to still be involved, it shows that she puts the team first and that's what you want in a team sport.”
The players in Japan are also putting the team first by not forgetting about her.
“She is the character and she is one that brings the jokes and the laughs and the smiles when times get tough,” Percival says. “But also, it’s just knowing that we are carrying her with us.
"If we are having a down day or we're feeling a bit sh*t, we just think about her and what she's been through. We’re really just playing this tournament for her.”
“For her, and another player [missing], Rosie [White],” Chance adds.
White has been to three World Cups and two Olympic Games with the Ferns, but the flare-up of a health issue she has been dealing with for some time ruled her out of this summer’s event at the last minute.
“We've got their shirts, so we keep them with us for every session and we have them around. They're only a FaceTime away, so we still communicate with them, we can still have a joke. It's about including them.”
“Any pictures we do, or stuff we do, they're always going to be with us,” Percival says. “It's just making them feel that they're also on this journey because, obviously, it's a bit different than an injury. It's health and it's something that's really stopped both of them.
“With Rosie, it was also quite a shock because it was so late and it happened so quickly. She's had a struggle for a few years now. She's another one that is like Stotty, she's just taken it in her stride and got on with it.
"That shows the characters they are. We’re flipping it around and using it as something to go into this tournament firing with, to really push us on in the tournament.”
New Zealand are the underdogs in their group. They will face the United States, World Cup champions in 2015 and 2019, a Sweden team that won the silver medal in Rio five years ago and Australia, that familiar foe that so often gets the bragging rights in their trans-Tasman meetings.
But the Ferns have something powerful behind them and, as Denmark’s men’s team have already shown already this summer, the impact of such a united force cannot be underestimated.
“We've got a bigger squad than most,” Chance says, with Stott’s shirt in her hands. “Because we've got the 22 here, plus those two.”