England international Lucy Staniforth and former Olympic athlete Denise Lewis were at Bourneville Warriors FC for a ‘Big Football Day’ on Wednesday 9 July.
Big Football Day is a grassroots celebration delivered across England by The FA and supported by The National Lottery.
Clubs across the country are being asked to open their doors to host a Big Football Day to celebrate EURO 2025 and increase female participation. The day will bring together the community with people able to pop down, get involved in taster sessions and watch matches live.
Lucy Staniforth speaking about the event: “You always as a footballer want to try and inspire as many people, but sometimes it’s quite hard to do anything about it other than just play so I think it’s great that partners like the National Lottery are putting on days like this and then I’m able to go out and see young girls playing the sport that I love, it’s really cool.”
Lucy speaking about how important are clubs like Bourneville Warriors FC in getting young girls into football: “I think it’s amazing that we’re able to watch the women on the TV but events like this sort of bridge the gap for people when they’re like I’m quite interested in this but I’m not sure how to go about it, so days like this for people that want to dip their toe in and see if it’s for them, it’s so good and we benefit from that too in the women’s professional league because we don’t exist without grassroots football.”
Lucy talking about how important the Lionesses are to getting people involved in sport: “What the Lionesses have achieved has changed people’s perceptions of female athletes or trying to change people’s perceptions of female athletes. I think when they won the EUROs the fact that they were writing to Parliament the next day to make football accessible for girls just speaks volumes of the people that they are and the legacy that they wanted to create. On the back of that, days like today are making sure barriers are no longer there and young girls can see if football is for them.”
Denise talking about the importance of today: “Girls have had to wait to feel included and that’s not right and so it’s important today we do see young girls taking part and feeling confident.”
