‘The Lionesses inspired me and my daughter to both get into football. We know it’s not just a boy’s game’
As a six-year-old Isabel McGinnis watched the Lionesses triumph to victory in the Euros with wide-eyed delight, she was filled with awe and inspiration and realised that football was far more than a game that girls could simply dabble in.
“Isabel has always been into football and enjoyed knocking a ball around in the back garden with her brother,” explains mum Sarah McGinnis.
“But the Euros and watching the Lionesses on television really took her interest in football to another level and she just absolutely loved it, soaked up the atmosphere and was just in total awe watching the women.”
It wasn’t just Isabel, now seven, who was motivated by the success of England’s Lionesses. Ms McGinnis, who is married to Ray and also has son Joseph, 10, tells i she went totally outside her comfort zone when she agreed to run a new under-eights girls football team from scratch – even though she feared she didn’t have the knowledge or experience.
“Isabel was desperate to play football, so I thought: ‘I’m going to do it for my girl’,” she says. “We now have a team of nine girls who are all seven and two ladies who help me with coaching. We have just played our first friendlies and are joining the League from September.
“When I look at the girls play, I am filled with so much pride and I still can’t believe that me and Isabel built it from nothing.”
Ms McGinnis, of Boothstown, Greater Manchester, tells i that Isabel’s love for the beautiful game has been heightened by the Lionesses’ World Cup achievements and she believes the team have inspired so many girls to follow their footballing dreams.
“I don’t think anything could have done more to help women’s football than the Lionesses. It has just been phenomenal,” she says. “We have been watching the World Cup matches with all the girls teams at the club and the atmosphere has been so wonderful. Seeing the excitement in the girls has been a joy.”
Ms McGinnis, who works part-time in recruitment, runs the new Astley and Tyldesley under-eight Leopardesses, the youngest girls’ team at Astley & Tyldesley FC.
Although Ms McGinnis has always loved watching football herself and supporting England and Manchester United, she says her motivation for creating the new girls’ team was her daughter Isabel and she emphasises that doing something like this is “totally out of character” for her.
“After Isabel watched the Lionesses, the realisation sank in: ‘Oh, girls can do this!’ and she suddenly understood that football wasn’t just something she could knock about and play in the street or back garden with her brother, but something that girls can do properly. Seeing the Lionesses in action made her think: ‘This can be me.’
“From that, she asked me if I’d take her to watch Manchester United Women because I had told her they only played down the road at Leigh. So I took her to her first-ever match – and that was it.
“We went to nearly every home match and Isabel just fell in love with watching the women’s game – and I loved seeing how much she fell in love with it.
“Before that, Isabel had always watched her brother play football and knew that her dad and brother went to watch the football and I think she had always seen it as something that ‘boys do’. But after watching women in real-life football, she knew it was something girls could do if they wanted.”
When Isabel’s love of football reached the point where she told her mum she wanted to start playing herself, Ms McGinnis hunted for a grassroots team for Isabel, but couldn’t find one which fit around her children’s activities and commitments.
She eventually found a team at Astley and Tyldesley, but the other girls were all a year older than Isabel and it was the youngest team. The manager who ran the team suggested Ms McGinnis could start a new team for younger girls – and she admits her initial reaction was to think it was beyond her.
“I said no at first as I said that I didn’t have the knowledge and wouldn’t know what I was doing,” she recalls. “But he said the club would fully support me and I would just get it.
“I spent ages thinking: ‘I can’t do this, I don’t know enough about it.’ But one day, I looked at Isabel and saw how desperate she was to play football and I thought: ‘I’m going to do it for my girl.’”
After signing up for various courses with the FA, Ms McGinnis put an advert on Facebook and on their first training session in May, she had eight seven-year-olds come down keen to join. The team now has nine players and Ms McGinnis has two female assistant coaches.
“I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would end up being a football coach as it is something that is totally out of my comfort zone,” she says. “I am not usually a forthcoming person and am quite nervous and think to myself: ‘I don’t feel I could do that.’
“But I absolutely love being a football coach and the passion I get from these girls and the way that they have come together since only May is unbelievable. It is like a little football family and I hope they stay together for years.”
She adds: “I could never have got as far as I have without the help and support from Astley and Tyldesley who have been brilliant, as well as the parents who are all on board and Lancashire FA who have supported me on all the courses.”
When asked about what she loves most about football, seven-year-old Isabel tells i: “I love playing in a team, scoring goals and saving goals.”
On the Lionesses, she says: “I love watching the Lionesses play and seeing the team. They used to be like me, but they worked really hard and never gave up and now they play for England.
“I want to try really hard and be like them one day so I can score goals like Ella Toone and Chloe Kelly and save goals like Mary Earps.”
Ms McGinnis says both she and Isabel have been hugely inspired by the Lionesses and she feels very grateful for what they have done for the women’s game. “I have been inspired by the Lionesses because if this had been happening 30 years ago, I would have been well up for getting involved in football,” she says.
“I am so grateful to the Lionesses and to manager Sarina Wiegman as they are giving these young girls what we never had back then.
“The biggest thing the Lionesses have given the girls is belief and passion. For Isabel, football has gone from being a game she played with her brother in the street or back garden to becoming her game and realising that the girls have got this.”
