East London girls' club Vicky Park Rangers FC recently won a three-year contract with Tower Hamlets Council to train on Stepney Green Astro, but when they showed up to the 3G pitch last week they found themselves locked out and replaced by a "casual boys' team."
Over 60 girls in the competitive club were affected.
The girls had trained on the pitch with no issue the week before, but the Council had terminated their contract without notice, saying that the original assignation to their club was a "processing error."
The club replacing them was reportedly a non-league men's team. The initial allocation process, receiving funding from Sport England, was points-based, with one of the factors being if a club supported women's and girls' football.
Vicky Park Rangers were offered different venues on Saturdays and Friday nights, but Saturdays are when they play their league games and the club turned down the Friday night slot because of concerns about the girls getting home safely.
U13 Coach David Drewer spoke out about how the girls were affected, with only half of them showing up to an practice he had organized earlier in the day because they had no access to floodlights. He also decried the Council:
"They're saying they made an error, but that's nothing to do with us, they made an agreement with us and they haven't told us how they will redeem that contract that we went through an application process to win."
Vicky Herbert, whose daughter Ivy plays in the club, explained that the club had "nowhere to go" as they had given up access to their old training ground, and called the decision "really frustrating."
Ivy said, "I just really love football and I'm trying out to do it at school, but I want to keep doing it [at Vicky Rangers] because I have loads of friends and it's really fun."
On Friday the club announced over social media that "following the excellent media/press involvement, Tower Hamlets Council, supported by the mayor and his team, have been in contact and as of 7:52 p.m. on Friday 29th September, we have reached an agreement that will provide our girls with a facility that allows them to train midweek."
"We recognise the involvement of the mayor's team has had an impact on us resolving this matter."
"We would like to thank everyone that has supported us and we are delighted that more than 60 girls will be able to continue playing football in Tower Hamlets."
