Introducing AFC Unity, The Left Wing Feminist Football Club

The reality for many women’s football clubs in England is that they are treated as subordinate to their male counterparts. While the women’s game has more exposure than ever – owing to the success of the England national team – and public interest seems to be at an all-time high, the landscape for women’s club football in England is still intermittently bleak.

Mere days before the beginning of the last Women’s Super League season, Notts County Ladies were folded because, in the words of Notts County chairman Alan Hardy, it would have been "financial suicide" to keep the team going. Just imagine the furore and the subsequent fundraising effort had the same been said of the men’s operation. A couple of months ago, Sunderland Ladies were booted off their Academy of Light training pitches in favour of the men’s development sides. While some clubs – notably Manchester City – have invested heavily in their women’s set-up, the majority of women’s sides are left in little doubt that they are considered less important than their affiliated men’s teams.

While many would point to the disparity in profits between the men and women’s game as the reason for this – reductive as that comparison might be – the fact is that women have been marginalised historically in English football. If the women’s game is behind the men’s in terms of profile and revenue, it may have something to do with the fact that it was actively suppressed for almost 50 years. In 1921, supposedly jealous of the high crowds in attendance at women’s matches and anxious they would become a vehicle for women’s suffrage, the FA banned women’s teams from playing at its member stadiums. This ban was not lifted until the late-1960s, while underinvestment, exclusion and hostility towards women’s football have continued into the modern day.

Certainly, when it comes to exclusion and hostility, the women involved with indie team AFC Unity have taken matters into their own hands. Founded in 2014, based in Sheffield and run as a not-for-profit organisation, the club has an ethos which enshrines all that is best about the grassroots tradition of women’s football. They stress inclusion and equality as core values, they eschew the dog-eat-dog attitude that characterises so many other clubs, and they put themselves at the heart of the local community. What’s more, the club is first and foremost about female empowerment; in part a reaction to all the years the women’s game has been put second to the men’s.

Unlike most other women’s football clubs, AFC Unity is a standalone enterprise and not affiliated to a men’s outfit. This is a point which its co-founders, Jay Baker and Jane Watkinson, are keen to stress. Jay is the manager of the club and was, until 2015, the only man on the Board of Directors (his resignation to focus on his managerial duties means the club now has an all-female board), while Jane is involved in the day-to-day running of the club and also plays for the first team. According to Jane, the idea of a women’s team going it alone is hard for some people to get their heads around. "The FA still describe us as AFC Unity Women’s, and it’s like: 'You don’t need to put "Women's".' We’re an independent women’s football club – nobody says 'Arsenal Men's.'"

For Jane, that independence is part of what makes the club a feminist endeavour. "With the club, giving women power is at the centre of it," Jane says. "Even with the coaching, the running of the club and so on, the big thing is to create an environment where women take on key roles, feel comfortable having a voice and having a say in how the club is run, and what we are going to do campaign-wise."

As one part of its community work the club has collected supplies and raised awareness for local food banks in a "Football For Food" campaign, with players encouraged to get involved with and help organise the volunteering effort. AFC Unity also pride themselves on their social conscience, which is reflected as much by what they do off the pitch as what they do on it.

Take a look at the club's badge and it’s not difficult to infer which way the club leans politically. Sporting a red star adorned with the word "Integrity", the club wears its left-wing values (almost literally) on its sleeve. Jay explains that it felt important to make the club a socialist as well as feminist undertaking, just another way in which the "Red Stars" are a reaction against the status quo of English football. "I’m a Doncaster Rovers fan, I was involved with the Supporters’ Trust there, and the more I found out about football at a higher level, the more I became disenchanted with it," Jay says. "That led me to really want to do something at a grassroots level, and get football back to what it was supposed to be originally: the love of the game, a connection to the local community and that community reflected in the collectivism of a football team.

"The team is predominantly left-leaning to centre-left, with a few Corbynistas in the side and certainly lots of Labour voters," Jay laughs. "A lot of the players work in social care, as doctors and nurses and so on, so I think we tend to attract a certain type, but we’re not dogmatic… we’ve said, 'Let’s look at the football first, see how that connects to the community, and then talk about what we care about,' instead of setting some sort of political criteria."

Nonetheless, the club is unashamed in promoting its collective ideals through football. Outside of the first team, AFC Unity run reserve training sessions for women of all abilities through a programme called "Solidarity Soccer". They have played friendlies against like-minded groups, like Clapton Ultras and Republica Internationale, and even give discounts to trade union members as their own symbolic contribution to the labour movement.

For many of the players who make up their 25-woman first team squad, this is what sets AFC Unity apart from other women’s teams and gives the club its unique appeal. Sarah Choonara, a member of the first team who’s been involved with its trade union initiative, talks passionately about the attraction of the club’s social and political side. "It’s one of the things that makes you feel very committed to the club, in that they’re very visible in supporting things like LGBT rights, workers' rights and the 'Football for Food' campaign, while they’re also very aware of the politics behind these issues," Sarah says. "Stuff like the discount for union members… it’s fantastic to play for a club which holds that stuff in high regard."

That said, the club is serious about its commitment to inclusion, with Jane and Jay both emphasising that there’s no political benchmark for participation. This is certainly the impression given by Sophie Mills, another AFC Unity first teamer who has been with the club almost since its inception. "What set AFC Unity apart was just how friendly and supportive they were when I joined… they don’t tolerate people being rude to each other and creating a negative atmosphere," Sophie says. "As well as that, you’re the main focus, where I think in a lot of places the women’s team is almost an afterthought… there is a political element to the club, but we don’t stand around in training talking politics or anything like that."

The focus on mutual respect, fairness and good sportsmanship come up time and time again in conversation with members of the club. Jane, for instance, quit football in her teens despite playing at a high level, put off by the disciplinarian attitude of her coaches and a prevalent survival-of-the-fittest worldview. AFC Unity is intended to be the opposite of that, an antidote to the bullying culture that so often thrives in competitive sport. In keeping with its socialist roots, the team is all about collective responsibility, as opposed to singling players out for criticism and abuse.

Though it is an indie club with only a few seasons under its belt, the staff and players at AFC Unity are showing that women’s football can be done differently. Not only are they providing an alternative to people put off by the prevailing norms of the game, they are doing so in a manner which puts the women who play for them first. Add to that their political awareness and undercurrent of fierce idealism, and it’s clear that their corner of Sheffield is graced with a pretty special football team. There’s a long way to go in the fight against the marginalisation of women in football, but it’s through grassroots efforts like this that real change will be made.

@W_F_Magee