Halifax Gave Rylee Foster-Inman Games. Everton Came Calling
By Nii Wallace-Bruce
Merseyside has always been a kind of home away from home for Rylee Foster-Inman.
Her grandparents are from South Liverpool. Now her football career has brought her back to the area, five years after she set herself a goal of returning to the Women's Super League. Foster-Inman has been here before. Everton. The WSL. The expectation of professional football in England.
But when she returns to Merseyside this time, she does so as a different goalkeeper.
“Coming back felt so right,” Foster-Inman told PSP Media. “It was the right time and moment for my husband and I, but it also was coming to the end of 5 years since my accident.”
Five years.
“My 5 year goal was to be back in the WSL and prove everyone wrong.”
She is back.
But the route here was not straightforward. It ran through Durham, Wellington, Dallas and Halifax, through different leagues and football cultures, and through years in which playing regularly was not always guaranteed. By the time the Toffees came calling again, Foster-Inman had become a goalkeeper the club had not seen before.
And that is where Halifax enters the story.
A Goalkeeper Needs Games
When Foster-Inman arrived at Halifax Tides, head coach Stephen Hart was not thinking about her next transfer.
He was thinking about his next training session. Hart had been put onto Foster-Inman by goalkeeping coach Mark Haynes and then-sporting director Amit Batra.
Haynes trusted Foster-Inman's ability to compete with Anika Tóth for the starting job, and Hart trusted Haynes.
There was experience there. There was a goalkeeper who had already seen professional football in England, New Zealand, and the United States.
But experience is not the same thing as playing. Foster-Inman had spent time in the WSL before with both Liverpool and Everton without establishing herself as a regular.
Halifax could offer something different. A starting position to fight for. Minutes to earn.
A season in which the goalkeeper's work would be judged not over an isolated appearance, but across weeks and months. Foster-Inman took it.
She had a strong preseason. She started the NSL season with confidence.
And early in the campaign she produced a clean sheet against defending league champions AFC Toronto at BMO Field. Foster-Inman grew up in Kitchener, Ontario.
Her previous appearance at BMO Field had come with Canada at the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in 2014.
This time, she was there as a professional goalkeeper, representing Halifax. She was playing.
In 10 NSL appearances, she kept three clean sheets before moving from the Atlantic to Merseyside.
“Her move to the NSL, along with consistent playing time and exposure facilitated the move back to the WSL,” Hart told PSP Media.
Foster-Inman does not describe Halifax simply as a stop on the way somewhere else. She talks about what happened when the league gave her the chance to be a player again.
“I feel valued and excited, but also happy that the work those in the NSL are doing is paying off, the league is developing and providing a platform for players.”
There is a quiet significance to the order of those thoughts. First, she was wanted. Then she was valued. And behind that was the work.
The games.
Rylee Foster-Inman returned home as a visitor when Halifax came to Toronto in May (Photo Credit: Northern Super League)
What the Games Gave Her
Ian McCaldon knew Foster-Inman before this version of her.
Everton's goalkeeping coach had seen the goalkeeper who left the club. Now he has watched her return. The intervening years have not changed the basic ingredients.
McCaldon still sees the technical ability, the shot-stopping, the distribution and the characteristics required of a goalkeeper operating at WSL level.
What has changed is what Foster-Inman has been able to do with them.
“Getting that game time was really grounding for her,” McCaldon told PSP Media. McCaldon saw the difference in the way she read games.
Different teams and tactical setups had given her a wider catalogue of situations to recognise.
“Playing with these different clubs before she'd come back to Everton has given her more game time, which has given her more game knowledge,” he said.
That is the part of experience that can be difficult to quantify. It is not simply the number of seasons on a résumé. It is the accumulation of situations.
The goalkeeper who left the Toffees had already been technically capable of playing at this level. The goalkeeper coming back has seen more of the game.
“She’s come back ... a more rounded goalkeeper,” McCaldon said.
This time, she arrives with a body of professional football behind her. McCaldon sees that as something Everton can use.
“She’s come back a more rounded goalkeeper,” he said. “Which strengthens our squad, which puts pressure on our number one.”
Foster-Inman is not returning merely to fill a place on the squad list. She is returning to compete.
And for a goalkeeper who has spent years searching for opportunities, competition is itself a form of recognition.
Someone has looked at the games she played in Halifax, the experience she accumulated in Wellington and Dallas, and the goalkeeper she became through all of it — and decided they wanted her back.
“To be wanted and sought after through the transfer window is nothing I’ve ever experienced before,” she said.
This is where the five-year journey changes shape.
For a long time, the question was whether Foster-Inman could get back.
Now the question is what happens once she does.
Halifax is Part of the Answer
It would be too simple to say Halifax sent Foster-Inman to Everton.
Her career does not work that way. The foundation was laid elsewhere. So did the years of recovery, adaptation and persistence that sat underneath all of it.
But Halifax gave her a particularly important thing at a particularly important time. It gave her games. And the NSL gave those games a stage.
She is the first player to move directly from the Northern Super League to England's Women's Super League.
The significance is not that the NSL has suddenly become a conveyor belt to Europe. One transfer cannot establish that. It is that the pathway exists.
A player can come into the league with experience, play regularly, build a body of work and attract attention elsewhere.
The NSL does not necessarily have to be the final destination for the players it helps develop.
As Stephen Hart sees it, the NSL was established to allow Canadian women players a place to play, develop and the potential exposure to reach their ambitions.
Sometimes the proof of a league's value is that its players are good enough to leave it. Foster-Inman is not the only example of an NSL player moving on.
Finnish goalkeeper Sofia Manner, who won the league with AFC Toronto in 2025, also departed Canada during the 2026 season.
The circumstances are different. So is the destination.
But there is a developing pattern in the idea itself: players are coming through Canada's new league, getting football, and becoming visible beyond it.
For Foster-Inman, that visibility has taken her back to a place she already knows.
Everton.
Canada’s 24th Prime Minister, Mark Carney, with Everton’s #24, Rylee Foster-Inman (Photo Credit: Everton FC)
Five Years Later
During a visit to Everton's facilities, Foster-Inman also met Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Carney is an Everton supporter. Foster-Inman had the jersey. The conversation was about football, but the moment stayed with her.
“I think as the last 24 hours have gone past it’s hit me a bit more that he now has my jersey,” she said.
“But what an honour and privilege it was to share a conversation with him about football and be connected through Everton.”
Five years after the accident, Foster-Inman is back in the WSL. The route took her through Durham, Wellington, Dallas and Halifax.
There were different coaches, different countries and different versions of the game.
There were seasons when playing was difficult to come by and others when she became the goalkeeper a team depended upon.
Halifax was one of those places. She got the games. She made them count.
Now Everton wants to see what that goalkeeper can do.
Sources:
Rylee Foster-Inman, Halifax Tides goalkeeper, press conference, 3 May 2026
Rylee Foster-Inman, Everton FC goalkeeper, personal interview, 17 September 2026
Stephen Hart, Halifax Tides head coach, personal interview, 31 August 2026
Ian McCaldon, Everton FC goalkeeping coach, personal interview, 12 September 2026
Photo Credits:
Foster stretching to save, Northern Super League, 3 May 2026 - Photo courtesy of Northern Super League
Rylee Foster-Inman and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Everton FC, 16 September 2026 - Photo courtesy of Everton FC
Video Credits:
Rylee Foster-Inman saves, Northern Super League, 27 May 2026 - Video courtesy @northernsuperleague via X
All photos are used with permission. All rights reserved to the creator.
Support PSP Media
Every contribution helps support independent research and reporting.