Manchester Laces, the football club for women and non-binary people
Thank you to Juliette Robinson for translating this article from Portuguese to English.
In Manchester, there is an ‘inclusive and friendly’ club that “defies binary thought processes” and breaks down “barriers and norms”. Responding to the archaic rules regarding the participation of trans and non-binary people in amateur football, Laces want to “start a movement that recognises that gender is fluid, and that football should not create barriers for those who wish to participate, instead creating a healthy environment for those whose “existence is marked by fear”.
When Jo McDonald was born 54 years ago, women’s football was banned in England, as a consequence of a decision made in 1921 – when women’s teams attracted crowds of thousands of spectators to watch their matches. At her school, there were “separate playtimes for boys and girls”, so “not only could they not play football, they couldn’t even see others” play it. It was something that was hidden from us, she explains.
Being so invisible to the eye, if at the time someone told Jo that a women’s match would fill Old Trafford, she would “never believe it”, in the same way that she “could have never imagined” that at 54 years old and long after her and others from her generation weren’t allowed to enter the field, that she would be playing football on a weekly basis. But this is what is happening.
The opportunity was given to her by Manchester Laces, the first inclusive club for women, and non-binary people in the second most populated city in the United Kingdom. Jo spoke to Tribuna Expresso at Platt Lane Sports Complex, after a training session with the team she captains, the purple team, one of many at the club. It is a diverse group that brings together those who have never kicked a ball before joining, those who only played at school and haven’t for a long time, or simply those who want to play, she explains to us.
Coming from a time when the doors of football were closed to half of the population, Jo has never been to Wembley, one of the temples of world football. She will go there for the first time on the 31st of July, to the final of the Euros in which England are playing. “I was born when women couldn’t play and now I am going to Wembley for the final of a huge women’s football tournament which has been sold out for a long time. “It is something that makes me very emotional”, she confesses, with a choked voice and an enthusiasm that makes her drop the ball she was holding throughout our conversation.
Manchester Laces was created in March 2021 with the objective of creating a club “with an inclusive and open ethos/environment”, regardless of background, religion, sexual orientation or gender, explains Helen Hardy, founder, and heart and soul of the project. A year and a half later the club already has “350 members”, says Helen, “100 permanent members, who play in the different Laces teams, and 250 who come from time to time, when they can”.
The club’s ethos “isn’t about the goals scored or the trophies won” guarantees the founder, but places emphasis on a “community” that is friendly and welcoming for all. It is a space for love, friendship, and well-being, which challenges binary thinking by breaking down barriers and norms. Manchester laces was named UK Amateur Club of the year in 2022, and also won a prize from “football against homophobia”.
At Manchester Laces, there are two training sessions per week. On Mondays this is open to anyone who shows up, whilst Thursdays are for those who wish to sign up to the club. Due to being an amateur football club, and the increase in activities during the Women’s Euros, it isn’t easy to get a response from the contact details listed on the club’s pages. The best way to get in contact with the laces is by going to the training sessions.
The Monday training session takes place at Whalley Range Sports Centre, a small training complex in a suburb like so many others in Manchester. In a small garden opposite the 5aside football pitches, a young man sat on the grass with three friends asks us as we pass by: “Bro, do you want some weed, mushrooms, what will it be? We have all types of drugs!”
The response is negative, and on the last of the artificial pitches, we see a group of players getting ready to play. One of them is organising teams, speaking English with an unmistakable Spanish twang. This is Elena, who, upon seeing the intruder on the pitch, asks if he is the “Portuguese journalist”. She apologises for the lack of response, and in a conversation that moves between the languages of Shakespeare and Cervantes, asks us to “come back on Thursday” for training, since on Mondays it is always more confusing due to the increased numbers.
On Thursday, the journey to Platt Lane Sports Complex, in the south of Manchester, is different. The neighbourhood surrounding the football pitches is much more culturally diverse, without the uniformity of other mancunian suburbs. There are shops with signs written in several languages, mosques, and restaurants emitting much different smells than the pubs in the centre of the city.
Behind the sporting complex there is an enormous park with a church, children playing, dogs being walked, and early-evening joggers. Platt Lane Sports Complex is very different from the Monday pitches. It is bigger, with several pitches, parked cars, and lots going on. There is a game between two amateur teams taking place on one field – to be broadcast via YouTube we are told, testament to the power of grassroots football here.
On the farthest pitch, there are already two matches taking place. In order to avoid walking through the matches, we walk around by the outer fence. There is a 25-year-old girl accompanied by a small dog sitting on the side-lines, in the midst of the backpacks of those playing just a few metres away.
In a break between the games that the girl and the dog are playing, we ask if this is the Manchester Laces training. The girl, who isn’t playing today because she “doesn’t feel well”, tells us yes, pointing immediately to a player in a black shirt and Lyon shorts. “She is Helen”, she tells us, as if she is the holder of all knowledge about the goings on here.
And, in a certain way, she is. Helen Hardy speaks with the enthusiasm of someone who truly believes in what she says, linking together well thought through ideas whilst flashing a smile on her face describing “doing what she loves” whilst conceding that “there is so much still to do”.
Helen is the founder, manager, administrator, and player for Manchester Laces, with a heart that beats for the club. She also owns Foudys, a business that owes its name to the American international Julie Foudy, and sells women’s’ football merchandise, like Barcelona shirts with the name of Alexia Putellas on, or USA shirts with four stars, a nod to the four world cups won by them (and not zero, because the men’s team have never won…)
At 32 years of age and hailing from Newcastle – the birthplace of Alan Shearer, she says, as if it were an extension of the name of the city – Hardy grew up in the “great land of football, with an enormous passion for the game and for her club”. Helen used to go to the Magpies games with her Dad and “loved” winning, gaining “a profound love for football”. But there was a problem: she said to her Dad that she wanted to be a football player and he responded that “this wasn’t possible” because “there wasn’t anywhere I could play”, which Helen considered to be “very unfair”.
To illustrate the difficulties that girls of her generation faced in playing the sport, Helen uses the example of Lucy Bronze, one of the stars of the England team and goal scorer in the triumph against Sweden that put the hosts into the Womens’ Euro final: “Lucy Bronze was born to the north of me, in Berwick-upon-Tweed [the most northerly city in England], and travelled every day to Sunderland in the south of Newcastle, to play football, racking up over 120 kilometres daily. The dedication shown by the players who are now elite was brutal, the effort they put in was much greater than, I don’t know, Jack Grealish or Phil Foden, who always had football on their doorstop”, she compares.
During the almost two hours that we are there, we see the training sessions between the two groups, each of them taking up half a pitch, but also socialising, conversations, laughs. There are shouts to ask for the ball or to encourage a shot, but there are no arguments or rows when errors are made. The atmosphere seems healthy, peaceful, so much so that this stranger is almost afraid of interrupting that balance.
Manchester Laces is open to women and non-binary people, that are divided into various teams and competitive spaces. There are two 11-a-side football teams that fit into the structure of Manchester’s amateur football, with a “good level”, says Helen. There are three teams in the Flexi League, a 9-a-side football competition with flexible hours, there are various teams in the Alternative Football League, a 7-a-side football league created by Helen herself, for “adults who play from time to time or who are about to start”; there is even space for Walking Football, in which you are not allowed to run.
Laces was the first club for non-binary people in Manchester, “but it is now not the only one”, the founder tells us, who names Rain On Me, a club named in honour of the Lady Gaga song. Helen believes that a “movement has begun that recognises that gender is fluid, and that football should not place barriers in front of those who wish to participate”.
The first trans player that came to the club asked Helen if they “were allowed to play”. Helen didn’t understand the question, in another reference to “the rules…”. From that moment, the founder of the club understood that “the existence of many of these people is marked by fear, because they do not feel welcome”, and established the main objective of “never closing the door to a new player that arrives”.
Helen explains that “because the club presents itself as inclusive” there are people that come along “who were afraid go elsewhere”. This unfolds itself in considerations of the relationship between sport and transgender and non-binary players.
“Most sports have turned or are turning their backs on these communities, and we shouldn’t deny that. We should recognise this, apologise, and assume that we are all learning. If you had asked me five years ago what a non-binary person was – and I am an LGBTQIA+ person – I wouldn’t have known how to respond. The world is changing, let’s change with it and honestly say “sorry we left you out”. People are afraid of what they don’t know and that is why those responsible haven’t made the changes they need to make. If you’re a white cisgender male, having someone who considers themselves non-binary might be something so far removed from yourself that you don’t understand”.
Helen considers the rules to play in women’s’ leagues as “archaic”, as they make non-binary people identify as women in order to play, which is “ridiculous”. For the founder of Laces, it should be based “upon integrity”, and “understanding that the issue is not that men want to come and play amateur football with women”, but that it goes “way beyond that”.
Whilst she watches the training session take place without her, Helen points to her legs and says “I’m fine, I haven’t broken any bones nor have I injured myself. This crazy idea that by playing with a transgender woman I will die or something like that is a complete misunderstanding of what amateur football is. This isn’t me against Grealish or Kane, and even if I were I wouldn’t die playing against them”, she emphasizes with conviction.
In Manchester Laces there are those who have transitioned to male and female, and there are also non-binary transgender players. The absence of some participants is because “the summer sessions are less crowded” we are told, and the shyness of others leads us to hear these stories from Helen’s eloquent mouth.
The founder of the club has fought “a lot for equality” between women’s and men’s football, “not equal pay” but yes for “conditions”, such as infrastructure and equipment”. For this, Helen doesn’t want “a transgender player to have to do more paperwork than a cis player”, because “everyone should put in the same effort”. So, she “takes their burden” and does this work herself.
For example, she paid £15 from her own pocket to convert a man’s driving licence into a woman’s, as you need to upload this document in order to register a player. She stresses, “it shouldn’t be like this” because “there is no reason why in amateur football someone would want to break the rules and have a man playing with us”.
As well as being open to women, trans women, and non-binary people, Manchester Laces defines itself as a “friendly” club. Hannah is part of the blue squad in the club, one of the 11-a-side team. She is a doctor in the emergency department at a hospital 10 minutes away from the training ground and a “huge fan” of Liverpool, with a season ticket at Anfield. She has been playing football since the age of 4 and is the number 10 – when we see her on the field we see that she is one of the best – but she had a break of about 10 years, which ended when she started playing for Laces.
Hannah has been a part of the project since the beginning, because a friend went to one of the first sessions and “loved the atmosphere”. She explains to us that being a “friendly club” is based on being competitive in an environment where “having fun is the most important thing”. The doctor recalls that when she was a child, “there were always teammates who were never given minutes in the matches” which was “horrible”, because “you are 10 years old, you go to a game in the north of England, in the snow, and you watch”.
“Here everyone has an opportunity, everyone can play, and above all, nobody gets angry, nobody is there screaming, which also ends up improving the level of play because the criticism is constructive”.
The “atmosphere” is one of the aspects mentioned the most by the people that are here. The eyes of Sarah, one of the players, light up when she tells us that before she had to drive for an hour and a half to play for the only club that allowed someone at her level to participate, whilst now she only has a 10-minute journey.
Jo McDonald wanted to “do an open-air activity” after lockdown, and due to this she signed up to the club. As the captain of one of the teams with the least experienced players, Jo says that “the important thing is to take away their fear, shyness”, providing “an environment of collective learning”, which “makes them feel part of a group”.
This feeling of belonging is something that many of the Laces feel. In addition to the training sessions and games, they organise outings to football games, night-time outings to the pub that one of the members runs in the centre of Manchester, and even camping trips. In May, one of the teams went to a tournament in Paris. “It is a lot for football, but also for the social aspect”, says Hannah.
The focus on mental health leads Helen to reveal “a shocking phrase” that was said to her: “There are players that say that this club saved their lives. Going out to see an England match or going out at night can make an immense difference for those that might be alone, with problems, just getting out of a relationship, people who don’t feel welcome elsewhere”, explains the founder. Jo, who works in real estate/property, underlines that “many of the players suffered a great deal during the lockdown, and could have gone for “a long time without speaking to anyone”, and that in Laces they are “valued, integrated, supported”.
At this point Helen, explaining what is happening in the club she created, talks about the “blunder committed by the women’s game”. For her, the game played by women has tried to be a copy of the men’s game, rather than taking a punt on what can be different.
“When you join a lot of women’s teams, you have the same lad culture as the men’s teams, where everything is aggressive, raw, almost animalistic. It feels like it is mandatory to be rude and have a toxic atmosphere”, she describes.
In contrast to this, Helen says that she went to the Portugal – Netherlands game and it was “just love”, in an environment for “celebration of the game” and that is “what women’s football has to take a punt on”, making “its own journey”. In the last 20 years, she says, the “men’s clubs in England have been creating women’s squads”, as if there were an “add-on to the men’s team”. Manchester Laces was the first club affiliated to the Manchester FA to be launched as a women’s only team, and people questioned where the men’s team was”, Helen remembers, because “in football, we are used to seeing the men first and then the women”, as if we’re “inviting them to a party that isn’t really for them”.
Hannah is gay and is part of Liverpool Pride, an association for LGBTQIA+ Liverpool fans. She thinks that the “fight against homophobia has improved in football”, although there is “much to be done”. In Laces, she guarantees, “there are no limitations or ‘buts’ at all”.
Due to the “toxic and unpleasant environment” of many clubs, there were many players that now play for Laces, but who previously turned their backs on football for a long time” says Helen. This has led her to “think about the quantity of women and people from various communities who the game has lost” due to there being a lack of open doors for everyone.
The end of the training brings the two groups together. There is a relaxed atmosphere, lifts home are organized, and plans are made for the following Friday.
Helen, when she founded Manchester Laces, hoped to have “15 or 20” people, but the big turnout “shows that Manchester needed a football team that was open to everyone”. Financially, the project has sustained itself “only with the contributions from the players” she explains, with “those who pay two to three pounds a week and those who pay nothing, as they cannot afford it”. For the upcoming season, agreements have already been secured with sponsors with “will allow us to improve certain aspects, such as equipment” in a “path: that aims to “create a structure that can pay professionals”, especially “mental health specialists”, something that “Laces wants to focus on”.
The atmosphere in the club is light, but that doesn’t mean there is homogeneity, as Helen wants to “reflect a community that is diverse”. From here comes that “pride” in having “Muslim women” who “maybe have never contacted anyone LGBTQIA+ before” to “pass the ball to a gay teammate”. Some of these Muslim women went to the pride march with Laces and their companions in turn supported them during Ramadan.
“This is a union that could maybe only be achieved through football, and that makes people realise that by being different, maybe we aren’t so different at all. On the football field we are not different, it’s about sharing that spirit and showing the community that there is space and benefits for clubs that truly welcome everyone”, explains Helen Hardy.