Nicki Bracey trains with a mixed team in the Axarquía but is in Team Spain’s women’s league at an international level
Walking football has really taken off on the Costa del Sol and indeed elsewhere in Spain, so much so that the Walking Football Cup of Nations is to be held in Alicante this October. The competition is now in its second year having taken place for the first time in England in 2024.
Nicki Bracey will be playing for Team Spain women’s team during the competition, having already played with them at an international level last year. Nicki, 47, has been described by fellow walking football player Mark Sylvester as “one of the best female players in Andalucía”.
She’s been playing football for over 20 years since she took it up in her early 20s in the UK. She explains that she didn’t have the chance to play at school, like many girls of her generation: “It’s one of my biggest resentments. Girls and boys were separated for PE and we only played netball and hockey,” she recalls.
Nicki soon fell in love with the sport and although she moved around the UK a lot with her job as a prison officer, she would always get involved with a team wherever she was living.
When Nicki moved to Malaga around seven years ago to work at a treatment centre for people with addictions in the Axarquía, one of the first things she did was to find a team.
At first she played “running football” with a team in Arroyo de la Miel, but during the Covid pandemic she moved to the Axarquía which is when she discovered the walking version. “I moved to Benamargosa during Covid and heard about the Aston Viñuela walking football team,” she explains, adding that while walking football wasn’t her preference it was “better than nothing”…
READ MORE at source: https://www.surinenglish.com/sport/the-british-woman-who-plays-walking-football-20250208081557-nt.html
Author: The Walking Football
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