Boys being pushed into girls’ football league

[PriOn1]

I found this article on Twitter and find it rather odd. It’s about a boy who wants to play in a girls’ football league. It doesn’t say that the boy “identifies as a girl” or anything similar. From the way it reads, he’s a boy who wants to play in the girls’ league because it’s easier.

What I don’t understand is the reaction of the Football Association, who seem to be insisting he must be allowed to play.

So I found myself wondering whether they missed out the fact that he claims to be a girl, or whether it might be more nuanced. For example, if there are already boys in the girl’s league who do claim to be female, does it then become discriminatory to exclude other boys?

Any thoughts or enlightenment? I shall now go off to search for other sources of information…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13149771/west-riding-girls-football-league-boy-footbal-association.html#comments

This is a boy problem, not a girl problem.

If boys' football isn't inclusive enough of non-competitive players for 5-a-side teams or 1st, 2nd and 3rd string teams, that needs addressing. GIrls' football is for girls, not male sporting failures.

The FA says that teams must be single sex by 18, as I read it, not that aren't allowed to be single sex if they want to earlier. So mixed sex is OK under FA rules but not compulsory if a club chooses otherwise.

the boy's parents asked the West Riding Girls League if their son could join due to him not wanting to play with other boys, and also BECAUSE OF HIS ABILITY LEVEL.

Alleluia! This is the first time I’ve heard someone telling the truth of why they want to play against women/girls. And I do hope this proves to be an own goal.

The FA have taken the cheapest and laziest possible approach to including girls. They’re trying to argue that opening U16 boys’ teams to girls is equality, when actually it means only the most exceptional and confident girls will get a start. Really supporting the women’s game means creating a girls’ U16 infrastructure so that girls of medium abilities can thrive as well as a few outliers.

Meanwhile grassroots teams have identified this absurdity and have created a girls’ infrastructure to meet the need. And now this has been brought to the FA’s attention, they want to close it down rather than accept that they are wrong. Sport should be single sex from U12 so that all girls have the opportunity to play safely and fairly.

Meanwhile, women are told that men in their sport should encourage them to train harder.
Why doesn't this boy just work harder on his skills to level up.

LenaLamont · Today 13:24

This is a boy problem, not a girl problem. If boys' football isn't inclusive enough of non-competitive players for 5-a-side teams or 1st, 2nd and 3rd string teams, that needs addressing. GIrls' football is for girls, not male sporting failures.

Amen.

I do wonder if the mixed sex policy is a hangover from the days when there we so few girls teams, talented girls had to play in boys teams. This was certainly the case back in my day.
But how incredibly lazy and unprofessional of the FA to not update the rules as girls football have grown, if that was the case. Fundamentally they don’t give a shit about women or girls football.

Of course they don’t. The FA BANNED WOMENS FOOTBALL in the 1920’s. When there were several very successful women players and teams. Hence we only got men’s teams until very recently. It didn’t happen by accident.

Mixed sex teams seems fine for very young kids, but I thought all that stopped at around 8 or 9? Evidently not. Making U-16 the cut-off point is ridiculous. It should be pre-puberty.

When my son was playing aged 8 and older there were no girls in his team or in any of the others they played against. Girls'teams were forming at the time and played separately. I wouldn't have wanted my daughter playing with or against some of those lads even aged 8 - the physicality and aggression were quite different.

The majority of the future England players will come from mixed leagues. Talented girls are encouraged to play against boys as it challenges them more.

I think that kid would be surprised at how much better the girls were than he is and given up quite quickly.

duc748 · Today 15:02

Mixed sex teams seems fine for very young kids, but I thought all that stopped at around 8 or 9? Evidently not.

I'm not sure about football, but it's mixed for hockey and other sports until Year 7 (11 years old) in my daughter's school.

My son was crap at football, he just played in his club's lowest level team for his age.

Why can't this boy do that?

This seems like a problem for boys' football to solve by having more inclusive teams.

It did occur to me when reading the news story that the parents are missing a trick though - I think they'd get their son a place in the team more easily if he did a bit of "identifying".

Girls need their own space in sport.
Tons research stars that. This would destroy girls football as coaches would bring in strong boys.
To bolster teams. The end

@Runskiyoga there are no boys in girl guiding.

I believe there are now boys in girl guides.

Boys who identify as girls can join Guides, as can men who identify as woman become leaders.

Am just cutting and pasting my post from the other thread as its relevant to this one:

And while some might dismiss this latest incident in Yorkshire as insignificant, and ‘just let this poor young trans girl play with the other girls’ - there are trans women Sunday league players being ‘invited’ to the UN in Geneva to discuss ‘The Transformative Future of Women’s Sports’. Nathalie Washington (grab from their public Instagram account attached) shared a platform with a genuinely ‘brave’ Khalida Popal - who is involved with the Afghanistan Women’s National Football team and who had to deal with living under the Taliban. Nathalie Washington is one of several trans women footballers who are keen that there’s healthy representation of trans women footballers in women’s football. We can’t afford to lose these smaller battles - they are crucial to preserving women’s sports (sorry for preaching to the converted!)

Why did the unofficial girls league get set up?

What was it that mixed sex wasn't offering?

Why did the FA fail to address the issues with mixed sex leagues, if there was a problem of this nature and they wanted girls to have inclusion and participation?

Why are they still failing to see why there is a problem with inclusion, and instead blame the girls for it, and insist they must lose their place to include a boy who isn't good enough for the boys game / doesn't want to play mixed simply because its the easy choice for him?

Why won't the FA allow single sex girls football, when the girls are pretty much unable to play in mixed level?

The single and only answer is because the FA are a bunch of sexist pigs from the Joey Barton school of misogny.

Once again women’s sports is the back up option for mediocre males. Not the plan B but the plan F.

This shows how seriously they take it.

I'm starting to wonder if we need to set up a points and awards scheme in the manner of Stonewall, with league tables. Except award 'misogynist' and 'sexist' and 'anti women' points.

And make it really public. Like the golden raspberries awards. The Golden Bellends has a nice ring to it.

There have always been girls playing in my boys football leagues. I personally don't find it that fair that they take up spaces on the boys teams but the boys can't do the same for girls teams actually. Its never about trans this or that - its girls who want to play on boys teams because boys teams are better of whatever - so I also find it insulting to fabulous female athletes too. I don't know what we have made it so difficult to just have biological boy and girl teams and a mix league if there is sufficient demand for it.

The Golden Bellends 😂Great suggestion Frood

My opinions on this are the same as everyone else's but it might be worth saying a little about how this works at the moment since a few have asked. I've never read the rules of any of the leagues but have made plenty of observations based on my kids & the kids of friends & neighbours etc.

(a) All u-16 football in the main FA affiliated [usually Saturday] junior leagues is in theory mixed.

(b) But the 'mix' over time narrows down as you move up the age groups from about [say]:

• 60:40 M:F in the tiny tots' age group;
• 80:20 at u-11's level
• then a sudden jump to about 95:5 at u-21s; and then
• 100:0 by probably u-14s.

(c) Girls' football, though also FA affiliated and 'official', is sort of its own thing. There are fewer teams. In our area a lot of the games are on a Sunday. Some of the best girls play both 'mixed' and girls' football between about say u-9s- and maybe say u-13s before either quitting altogether or switching exclusively to girls. The issue of boys playing for these teams just never really comes up. Generally a girl who's good enough to be genuinely worth a place in the mixed say u-12s ish level upwards will be a standout player in the girls' game, e.g. a player who scores goals most weeks, may be good enough to have been tried out at one of the pro clubs' academies, that sort of thing. At a minimum the kind of girl who's an automatic pick for the first team in any sport at her secondary school.

(d) At the beginning of u-12s [year 7] only a minority of boys have gone any of the way through puberty. you definitely do get the very odd six foot, muscular type but they're rare enough to be widely known and instantly recognisable across the league. They're still a smallish minority, but a lot less rare, at the beginning of u-13s. By the beginning of u-15s they're almost universal.

a couple more observations are that:

(1) where I live [SW london league] almost no junior football clubs have changing facilities;

(2) in the 'mixed' groups, participation rates even for boys drop off rapidly over the age groups. there are many, many more u-10s teams than u-16s. unathletic kids generally seem to quite or get weeded out by about say u-14s. but up to about say u-12s, there are still some very unathletic boys at the weakest clubs in the lowest divisions. e.g. last year i saw one kid who i thought might have a mild form of cerebral palsy playing. following the [more or less] death of informal street and park football there probably is a gap for very uncompetitive, low level, organised football for boys in their early to mid teens... but the dedicated girls' league is absolutely not it.