For the past 18 months or so – until lockdown intervened – I’ve played in a five-a-side league with a squad of old school friends. Except for me, it’s an all-male team and an all-male league. No one seems to object to my presence, though the league is not officially mixed; if it were, there would probably be an exasperating gender quota system as an equalising measure.
Everyone’s casual silence on the matter has made me wonder if the other players even notice me – that is, register my presence as female. But I can usually sense a kind of bodily acknowledgement of my gender on the pitch, a wariness of approach, the source of which is conveniently obscure: a subtle reticence borne of the gallant expectation that I’m physically fragile and bad at football, or of fear that I might be good?
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