Who’s winning? Who cares! Gals FC’s joyful rebellion against keeping score | OneFootball

What’s the score? Well, at this particular recreational women’s football club, they are genuinely unconcerned by the answer to that question.

Gals FC is the brainchild of best friends Lorne Magill and Nora Beqaj. They believe their core principle of never keeping the score is a key reason why their community movement has grown rapidly from seven women having a kickabout in Clissold Park in north London two and a half years ago to having more than 200 active, paying members in groups in London, Brighton and Ipswich.

Instead of referees they have so‑called “vibe protectors”, volunteers whose role is – you guessed it – to protect the vibe at each session and make sure nobody takes things too seriously. Instead of a top goalscorer award, the only thing they keep track of and reward is how many sessions you have attended.

They have 11 sessions running every week, and because of their growing waiting list they are planning to run 50 sessions a week by the end of the year. It all began with a moment of realisation in the pub shortly after England’s women won Euro 2022.

“We were at the pub and we said: ‘All we do is eat, drink and spend loads of money on food and have deep chats – we need something new in our life,’” says Magill, who had never played football before creating Gals FC. “The Euros had just happened, and we thought: ‘Football looks fun, let’s try that.’ And it grew from there.

“It does what it says on the tin: this is just a bunch of gals. We’ve trademarked our name, thank God, because it’s such a big part of who we are. Some people look at it, Gals, and think: ‘Well that’s a bit silly.’ And we say: ‘Well, yes, that’s the point.’

“Our first session was the most happiness and joy I’d felt in an hour. Now people have described it as their ‘weekly happiness hit’. When anyone scores on either side, both teams are excited. They’ll high‑five someone on the other team because they scored. We all swap positions every five minutes because everyone wants to try everything, to have a go at shooting and to have a go at defending, and going in goal. We all take turns to go in goal, because that just feels fair.”

Although they acknowledge their ethos is deliberately “silly”, they are deadly serious about their plans for the future of this community. They are about to expand into new sites in the north of England and eventually want 150,000 women to be playing football with Gals FC across England every week. They believe their non-competitive approach to grassroots football can provide a health boost to women across the country.

Beqaj, who is originally from Toronto, Canada, says: “One of the things Lorne always says is we’d be doing an amazing job if, eventually, someone went to their GP and said they’re feeling lonely or struggling to keep active, and the GP said to them: ‘Have you checked out the Gals FC in your area?’ That would be our dream, for that to be linked up with women’s health.

“The idea was, we just want to go and have some fun, and 91% of our members have said this has a positive impact on their mental health in our latest impact survey.

“There are so many places you could go and keep score and try to progress your football skills, but when we were telling people: ‘We’re not going to keep score,’ well, ‘no score’ has become a big thing in our community. If anyone is playing too competitively, our vibe protectors would say: ‘Hey, that’s not actually what this club is for.’”

Of monitoring players’ attendance record, Beqaj says: “At 20 sessions you’re a ‘rising star’, at 50 sessions you’re an ‘icon’ and at 100 sessions – which we both are – you’re a ‘captain’. We have a value that we don’t play to win, we play to play. That’s the whole point of showing up. It’s insanely heartwarming, and in our impact survey 70% of the women that play with us would not be playing football if it wasn’t for Gals FC.”

The club is organised using WhatsApp groups and, depending on the location, members pay either a subscription to cover the costs of pitches, insurance and equipment, or pay as they play. They have also started a podcast but the ambition is to make a real noise in the grassroots football industry.

“Our vision is to become a household name in women’s recreational football,” Magill says. “Before this I was one of those people who you could barely drag along to the pub to watch the World Cup. The Lionesses are one of the reasons I love watching football now. We genuinely think that, in 10 years’ time, there’ll be as many women playing football as men. For Gals FC, that means we want 150,000 people playing with us every week, so we’ve got work to do.”

Header image: [Photograph: Gals FC]