These girls are all 15 or 16 and for all of them, growing up, football hasn’t been just a boys’ game.
As their PE teacher at Biddenham School in Bedford, they have to do it at school, which is brilliant especially now that so many of them also choose to do it out of school.
So football has been great for the girls, both in a physical and recreational sense. It’s great for their confidence and there’s a big stigma around morale as well.
We’ve got girls who are across two year groups so their paths don’t always cross at school, but we had a mini-bus full of laughter coming here, so it’s obviously going the right way.
We were invited to St. George’s Park for the launch of this season’s FA People’s Cup and it didn’t take long to find the volunteers to come.
The girls have facilities at the school to play football, Futsal and small-sided games and they all enjoy it. Some play for fitness and some play for friendship, but they’ve all got smiles on their faces which is the most important thing.
And out of the team which we brought to St. George’s, we’ve got four girls that play at club level in Bedford and a lot of the others enjoy playing at recreational level.
I’m sure they’ll all be signing up for the People’s Cup this year, it’s great for the girls to get some exposure to competitions like this and it's so easy for them to get a team together and sign up.
After having an amazing experience to train and be coached at SGP, something which they’d never normally get to see, I'm sure they'll all be well prepared for whatever they might face when the first round comes along.
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The 2018 FA People's Cup kicks-off between Friday 23 and Sunday 25 February when the first round begins, at venues across the country.
