Mum-of-three Toko Robbins works at the other end of the spectrum, having set up a women’s walking football club.
After playing the game with her brother as a child, she still remembers her heartbreak when, dressed in her kit, she was taken by her dad to try out at a club.
Toko, 48, from Poole, Dorset, says: “They wouldn’t let me play because I was a girl. It was soul-destroying.”
When her own children started playing football, Toko’s childhood experience meant she didn’t really get involved.
She says: “Then one day I went down and saw my eight-year-old daughter in goal, getting compliments. She was the same age I was when I was told I couldn’t play.
“It made me wish myself and other women had had the opportunities when we were younger.”
It inspired her to set up Lilliput Women’s Walking Football in June 2023, with sessions in the park every Monday lunchtime.
Her mother Margaret, 78, is one of the players, while others include women getting back into fitness after a baby, injury or illness.
Toko has also started coaching the Lilliput Girls’ football team, which her daughter plays for.
“For many of the women it was a dream they didn’t know they had, because it had been buried so deep,” she says.
“Many of us were told we couldn’t play. We thought there was something wrong with us — but it was society.
“This prize validates where we are coming from and what we have been through.”
READ MORE about the 10 Grassroots Sporting Heroes at source: https://www.the-sun.com/lifestyle/10864732/grassroots-sporting-heroes-women-girls/
Author: The Walking Football
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