A different goal: how women’s football is changing the beautiful game

A new wave of owners, players and fans are ensuring women’s football is not just a pale imitation of the men’s game, but celebrates its own unique values

A small wooden beach hut. Not your usual pitch-side corporate hospitality suite. But this is Lewes FC and the four beach huts are its equivalent of glass-encased executive boxes. “You can rent them out,” says Karen Dobres, the club’s special project lead. I have a quick look in one: clean, functional, also chilly, I should think, in winter. But the open shutters give a high vantage point on to the pitch, which is smooth and green and perfect on this warm July day.

I’m here to watch a pre-season women’s match against MK Dons, and Dobres, a local writer and activist, is taking me on a pre-game guided tour. I like football, but even if I didn’t I’d like Lewes FC. Right on and stubborn with it, the club has forged its own identity within the game. There’s the statue of two female pirates; the dedicated areas for breastfeeding; the club’s community garden, set up a couple of years ago by men’s team midfielder, Bradley Pritchard, known as Brad’s Pit. When a player gets player of the match, they are given garden produce: a brace of spring onions, some beetroot, a cauli. At the covered stand, Dobres points out that the seats are padded, rather than just plastic. “We heard they were being removed from Wembley in a refurb, so we asked if we could get them,” she says.

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