How a ragtag bunch of women renewed my love of football (2024)

This story is part of the February 4 edition of Sunday Life.

Five minutes after being cynically tripped from behind in a game of football (soccer, to some) and landing so awkwardly that I was paralysed by pain and had to be carried off the field, my coach asked, “Reckon you’re right to go back on, mate?”

It wasn’t long after this incident that I gave up playing competitive football. I still loved the game but I no longer loved playing it. After nearly two decades of lacing up the boots, I’d grown weary – at just 23 – of the machismo and, at times, violence of so many boys and men I’d played with and against.

I barely touched a ball for the next 10 years. That changed one Sunday morning in late 2002 when my partner took a phone call from a long-time friend. “He’d love to come,” she told her friend while coolly side-eyeing me. “I’ll bring him down this afternoon.”

I wasn’t happy about it, but I’d been volunteered to give a few pointers to a bunch of women (in their late 20s and early 30s) who’d been meeting regularly at a North Fitzroy park to teach themselves football. “It’ll do you good,” my girlfriend said, conscious that I was very much living in a bubble since my move from Sydney a year earlier.

A ragtag bunch of women gave us a warm greeting, and soon we were playing a small-sided game amid the elm trees. All new to football, and most not particularly athletic, they misplaced simple passes and crowded the ball. But their good humour and the joy with which they played won me over. Lolling about afterwards in lengthening pools of shade, they asked if I’d come again the following week. Despite my fear of commitment, I agreed. Before I knew it, my Sunday afternoons had a regular booking.

By the new year, “my” group of budding footballers had, despite the long odds, discovered another group of women doing the same thing at a park a few suburbs north. Of this second group, some were in their mid-40s, a few were older. They were women who’d spent many years on the sidelines watching their kids play and reflecting that football had never been a sport they’d had an opportunity to play when they were growing up.

By the time I called it a day, 11 years later, I had two daughters, less hair, and more wrinkles.

Soon enough, the two groups came together and, after a debate as exhaustive and exhausting as anything seen on a Senate floor, they decided to become a team. Then, despite concerns about their inexperience, and stomach-flipping fears that they’d only make fools of themselves, they approached the club at which some of their kids played. Just like that they became the first women’s team in the then 55-year history of the Brunswick Zebras.

Told they’d be playing in the bottom division of the women’s state league, they were asked if they needed a coach. “Do we?” they later asked me. After serious contemplation I said they didn’t, that I’d be along for the ride. This won’t last beyond a year, I figured.

By the time I called it a day, 11 years later, I had two daughters, less hair, and more wrinkles. But I’d had an experience that I now consider to be one of the most meaningful and rewarding of my life.

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From the moment we played our opening game in a Biblical storm, and got out of it with a 1-1 draw against much younger opponents, I was hooked. Having football back in my life again was only a small part of it. It was the team.

In footballing terms there were a lot more lows than highs over the years, but ultimately the lows – calamitous losing streaks, broken bones, crises of confidence, my appalling sideline attire – didn’t matter.

What did was the team’s shared purpose, its sense of togetherness and community. A community evident at home games, where some players breastfed at halftime, where their husbands, boyfriends, partners and kids yelled support from the sidelines, then charged down the banks of the adjacent creek to retrieve waywardly kicked footballs before the current spirited them away.

Despite all the times I had my head in my hands watching them play, they were a pleasure to coach, in part because they never took their footballing adventure, or me, for granted. Being older, having kids, having busy jobs, having complicated lives, it wasn’t always easy. I was aware of their bravery and effort. And they were hyper aware of the time I gave them, and the time my partner gave them by association, when our babies came along. So they baked me cakes and biscuits, regularly gave me bottles of wine and beer (“To take the edge off the loss, Chief”), and showered my kids in gifts.

Before I called it a day, I started playing again myself, casually, with a curated bunch of fellow geezers; men who could all play a bit but understood that being competitive and being a dickhe*d didn’t have to be mutually inclusive. On Sunday afternoons when the stars align, we hit the park. Our knees click, our bones ache, our calf muscles pop more often than we’d like, but there’s nowhere else we’d rather be.

The Mighty ’Bras (Wordsworthy) by Paul Connolly is out now.

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