The Football Association is threatening to close down one of the largest girls’ football leagues in the nation because it won’t let a guy participate in its games. A dispute has erupted between the FA and administrators overseeing a female league in Yorkshire, according to information obtained by The Mail on Sunday. The parents had complained that their son was denied entry. It’s understood that the FA has threatened to suspend and impose penalties on the West Riding Girls Football League should it refuse to allow boys on the field—a move that league officials have called “a tremendous threat to the girls’ game.
At a meeting called by the league’s organizers last week, managers expressed fear that permitting guys to play would ‘open the floodgates’. The league has over 300 teams and at least 6,000 under-18 girls. The FA acknowledges that ‘physical strength, stamina or physique’ can disadvantage one sex over the other, but maintains that any under-16 squad must include both boys and girls in its rules. The boy’s parents inquired about their son’s talent level and desire to play with other males when they approached the West Riding Girls League at the end of October of last year.
Subsequent to the league rejecting their request, the parents filed an appeal with the national FA-supervised West Riding County Football Association, which purportedly informed the organizers that they were ‘in no position to refuse the application’ and would be penalized for their actions. “This is a massive threat to the girls game and we should be mindful that this could be a long struggle should we fight this head-on,” the league secretary said in an email to its members last week.
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