Finally, a London football club for Asian women and non-binary and trans folks
These London footballers are pushing back against casual racism, tokenism and a transgender ban by the FA
It was 2013 when Kiran Dhingra-Smith decided she’d had enough. Opening the sports cupboard at her local football club, she cast her eyes around for anything the girls’ squad she was coaching could practise with.
For the umpteenth time that season, barely anything remained after the boys’ teams had picked it clean. Naturally, they’d been given an earlier slot on the pitches. “Sometimes I would email and be like, ‘Can we at least make sure we have balls?’” she recalls. “And it would just get ignored.”
The final straw came a few months later, when she was coaching an East London under-15s team. A male coach had been put in charge of bringing the equipment to the pitches but was always late, openly admitting his boys’ team took priority, and repeatedly left the girls waiting out in the freezing cold and rain.
So Dhingra-Smith flagged it to her boss, who sent the coach an email telling him to do better. The following week, he arrived on time, but immediately took her aside to put her in her place. “You don’t know me,” he said menacingly. “You don’t know what I’m capable of.”
“I was 17 at the time,” she recalls, still incredulous.
Half Indian, half English, a now 30-year-old Dhingra-Smith laughs as she reflects on the sheer effort she’s been forced to expend just trying to exist as a woman in football over the years.