Team members calling for district level funding for girls’ football at the Town Hall last night (Thursday)

WITH footballs – and the world – at their feet, dozens of girls blew the whistle last night (Thursday) on unfair funding allocation and the unequal distribution of football pitches between genders in Islington.

The girls, who are players in a newly formed Islington district team, went to the Town Hall to ask councillors to help fund their team after they failed to find anyone to stump up the £2,500 annual cost to run it.

They have launched a crowdfunding appeal this week. Without the cash the team faces the chop.

While it is regarded as a well-established part of the journey to club football for boys, district football for girls only came to Islington last year when Ellen Maggs, a former Arsenal and England player, set up the Islington Girls’ District Football team.

District football features selective teams where the best from Islington play teams from other boroughs.

Ms Maggs, 40, who was “sponsored” by Arsenal’s record male goalscorer Thierry Henry during her four years at the club, said she spent two years going “back and forth” with district football organisers who insisted there was no interest in a girls’ team at this level.

She ended up establishing the team herself last year, partly out of her own pocket.

“I went out and I found the interest. We found the opposition and then we came back and it was still the funding that was a problem for us.”

The girls’ district team was only able to get up and running after the Arsenal Foundation – a charitable arm of the club – stepped in at the last minute last season. It has been unable to do the same again this season, however.

The team Ms Maggs founded won two out of three competitions they were involved in last season, and she said they are “thriving”.

Ms Maggs has questioned why the Football Association (FA) has not set money aside to fund girls’ district teams, when it is recognised as crucial in the pathway to clubs and professional development centres.

“Without the districts running, these girls are just playing for fun in the park,” she said.

Parents Fiona Bullman and Guilene Marco at the full council meeting

“Running districts and being able to get them the exposure to the higher level of football means that they can get into academies and they can become paid footballers. I never got playing football to be my job, and that is why I do this.”

A season ticket holder at the Emirates Stadium, Ms Maggs grew up and still lives in Canonbury.

She was forced to give up her own footballing dream at 22 and take up nannying to pay her mortgage.

Eighteen years later, she says the women’s game has changed beyond all recognition. While she earned just £50 a game in her final season at Arsenal, players today can earn a decent wage, although nowhere near on a par with men’s football.

The popularity of the women’s World Cup in the summer demonstrates the potential for women’s football to explode, she said, both among young girls who want to train but also on the terraces where people want to watch them play.

But the girls at the Town Hall last night said they just need to be given a fighting chance.

“The only way you get the women to be the best they can possibly be is by giving them the grassroots level of quality exposure to pitches, coaching and all the rest of it that the boys have been getting,” Ms Maggs said.

“If you don’t get grassroots right, how do you get the professional game right?”

She also warned that girls’ football gets roughly a quarter of the pitch time afforded to boys’ football in Islington and that finding space was a major problem with just three suitably-sized pitches available to them but with bookings dominated by men’s football.

“Something has to give somewhere,” Ms Maggs said, but rather than simply kick male teams off the grass and astroturf, she said a solution could be found in building pitches on roofs.

Alice, 11, is a winger for the Islington Girls’ District Football team who has been playing for four years and wants to be a professional footballer one day, like her Arsenal hero Kim Little.

She said: “The girls should have the same opportunities as boys. It’s not fair that boys my age are going further than me even though I’ve been playing for longer than them.  It makes me quite sad and also quite angry in a way that we aren’t getting funding even though we are a very good team and that we could make it very far if we did have the funding.

“It doesn’t make us feel wanted and it’s quite annoying because we are very good footballers and we should be able to go as far as the boys.”

Alice’s mother, Guilene Marco, said she found it hard seeing her daughter offered fewer footballing opportunities than her son.

“As a parent, your children are the same or equal,” she said. “So it’s frustrating when the system doesn’t allow both your children to just live the same way.”

Following a question from parents about funding at last night’s full council meeting, Councillor Nurullah Turan, executive member for health and social care, said he was “very excited” to announce that the council were launching a new sport and physical activity strategy called Islington Active Together later this month, and he invited the girls’ teams to apply.

He added: “Women and girls’ football in Islington mirrors the rise and growth in the national game. As part of our strategy, we will look at long term funding for girls district football in Islington so that we have a sustainable approach to future programmes going forwards.”