England’s Lionesses famously have a chef to prepare them a pre-match meal of healthy carbs while they chill out playing cards.
But a new generation of feisty girl footballers prefer beans on toast and giving their boy opponents “death stares”. Meet the Queens Park Ladies under-12s, a crack all-girl team whose unbeaten season against boys’ sides has earned them the nickname The Invincibles, just like Arsenal in 2003-4.
The last time I got my knobbly knees out to play footie it was in 1979 when Kevin Keegan perms were in fashion and I was the only girl on a boys’ team. This time I was being run off my feet on a chilly field on the south coast by a team of ruthless pre-teens who have finished their season unbeaten at the top of Division Three of the Bournemouth Youth Football League.
Having proved they’re more than a match for the boys, the girls’ remarkable run of 18 wins, four draws and no defeats, means they’ve now been promoted to Division Two of the U13s League. As a reward, the girls and their parents have been invited by Chelsea Women to the club’s Champions League semi with Barcelona on Saturday.
Chuffed at all the attention they’re getting, goalie Mariah Silvah, who at 12 is already taller than me, says: “It’s really exciting beating the boys. We leave them crying – on the insides.”
But while the girls are evenly matched with the boys at this age, they admit it can get heated on the pitch. Savannah Hamilton, 12, says: “Boys are more physical,” then adds, grinning: “And you can get in scraps with them.”
Midfielder Millie Ray, 11, reveals: “The boys get angry when we get the ball off them.” Possibly a result of their pre-match tactics of unsettling the other team. “I death stare them,” says Skylar-Mae Henshall Dicks, 12, while Edith Wragg, also 12, is even more cunning: “I tell them their laces are undone.”
The team’s parents clearly enjoy the look of surprise when they turn up to matches fielding an all-girl team. Matt Owen, an ex-youth player for Portsmouth and dad of Sidney, 12, and Eliza, 10, says: “When we first played each of the teams, you could hear the boys laugh when they thought, ‘This will be easy – it’s a bunch of girls’. But five minutes into the game, you can see the look on their faces change when they realise what they’re up against.”
Millie’s mum Naomi says: “Some parents take a sharp intake of breath and say, ‘Ooh, they’re actually quite good’.”
The easy camaraderie and cheeky confidence among the girls is a stark contrast to when I was at school. Girls were not allowed to play football. I was eventually, grudgingly, given permission to join the boys, but I was not supplied with kit, boots or even a changing room.
It has taken a long time for things to change but, having waited since 1966 for England’s men’s team to bring football home, we clearly had to start doing it for ourselves.
Inspired by the Lionesses winning the Euros in 2022, and just narrowly missing out on World Cup glory last summer to Spain, girls’ football clubs are now springing up all round the country.
Yet just four years ago, ex-Army dad and insurance boss Toby Green had to set up his own girls’ team to coach his daughters – Olivia, 12, and 14-year-old Amelia, now in the U15s. Toby, 42, says: “Like lots of dads, I started by knocking a ball around in the garden, but when they were old enough to play properly – they could only join boys teams.”
His teaching assistant wife Shelley, 36, helped him set up Queen Park Ladies and tried to get his under-12s team in the boys’ league. He says: “Initially, the league was really welcoming but the county FA – for the right reasons – were protective of the girls. I told them, ‘Look, these are the girls’ results against boys, don’t put them in a girls’ league – it’s a waste of time’.
“So they put them in the boys league and it went really well.”
Queen Park Ladies now have 13 teams ranging from under-sixes to under-15s. They recruit from all over Hampshire and are over-subscribed. Others in The Invincibles squad comprise Layla Argent, 11, and five who could not make our photoshoot – 12-year-olds Holly Wallace, Isla May and Brooke Woodman as well as Imiya Day and Erin Steele, both 11.
The secret to the girls’ success is the intensive training on Thursdays and Saturdays every week with Toby and his parent coaches, especially Chris Wragg.
It was time to impress the noisy girls with some of my silky skills. “How many keepie-uppies can you do?” they all yell at me at the same time.
A stern Chris silences them with a management technique he clearly learned from the Soviet KGB and then gives me some tips as nine sets of deeply unimpressed eyes watch me. “OK, one,” I say, fumbling the ball. “But that’s an improvement.”
The girls’ biggest fans are their parents, who have their own problems, such as getting the girls to stick to an athlete’s diet. Shelley admits, “It’s quite hard to get them to eat the right foods, but I always make sure Olivia has beans on toast before a match.”
At a time when school sports can be more about taking part than winning, it’s quite controversial to see how learning to cope with suffering defeat has helped the girls succeed. Mum Naomi says: “They often got thrashed when they were little, which has built a lot of resolve and resilience. As parents, we were worried, but it’s definitely given them inner strength.”
And they will need it more than ever next season. So how does coach Toby rate their chances? Sucking his teeth in like a plumber about to pull the plug on your bank balance, he says: “Ooh, I’ve got a target on my back now. The upper division means the level will be harder and some of those boys will be early maturers. But the girls will be up for it, they’ll give it a good go.”