Issue
October 2020 37 articles indexed
Read She Kicks issue 63 in full
Column / Opinion p.3
Jen O'Neill welcomes Sarina Wiegman's appointment as England head coach from autumn 2021 and notes that who leads Team GB to Tokyo is still unresolved, before turning to something a magazine editor rarely puts…
News pp.4–5
Vitality replace SSE as sponsors of the Women's FA Cup in a three-year deal that begins with the delayed 2019-20 final at Wembley, with Alex Scott as their football ambassador. The FA confirm a…
Other p.4
A dated listing of the fixtures and draws for the autumn of 2020, published while the calendar was still being rebuilt around the pandemic. It opens with the delayed 2019-20 Vitality Women's FA Cup…
Poster p.6
A full-page poster of Lyon celebrating the 2020 UEFA Women's Champions League, the fifth they had won in consecutive seasons and the seventh in their history. The final, played in San Sebastian at the…
Poster p.8
A full-page poster of Chelsea with the 2020 FA Women's Community Shield, won at Wembley on the eve of a season that would begin with the club as reigning WSL champions on points per…
Run-of-page feature p.9
A short scene-setter for the most extraordinary transfer window the FA Women's Super League had seen. The magazine is careful not to take a side on whether the volume of overseas arrivals is a…
Other pp.10–13
A four-page reference map of how international the FA Women's Super League had suddenly become. It lists every player in the 2020/21 season who comes from or represents a nation other than England -…
Interview pp.14–15
The first South Korean to play in the FA Women's Super League, and by 2020 the fulcrum of the Chelsea side, takes the magazine's quickfire questionnaire and answers it with some charm. She describes…
Other pp.16–17
Ten photographs from the opening nine days of the 2020-21 Barclays FA Women's Super League, the first competitive matches after the abandoned season and the summer's remarkable transfer window. Jill Roord scores a second…
Cover feature pp.18–21
Canada's centre-back arrived at Tottenham on loan from Orlando Pride alongside Alanna Kennedy, a few weeks before Alex Morgan followed them, and she is candid about what drew her. England makes the fifth country…
Column / Opinion p.22
Writing a few weeks into life at Tottenham, Kerys Harrop reports that pre-season flew by, that she has been exploring London and Windsor while the weather holds, and that she feels part of the…
Other pp.24–29
Twenty FA WSL players answer a set of deliberately silly questions, and the results are more revealing than the format suggests. Most of the league, it turns out, believes in life on other planets…
Other pp.30–31
Ten photographs from the opening nine days of the 2020-21 FA Women's Championship, a division that rarely gets this much space. Jess King scores for Charlton, Millie Farrow for Leicester City, and London Bees'…
Column / Opinion p.32
Wales' record scorer files hours after a narrow defeat away to Norway, and begins with what international football in a pandemic is actually like: ten days in hotels without her usual roommate, masks in…
Column / Opinion p.33
Hibernian's captain reports a pre-season she never expected to enjoy. Training resumed under guidelines that at first forbade contact and groups larger than five, and the squad took the new normal in its stride…
Other p.34
The Welsh section of the magazine's four-nation reference guide to the women's league pyramid, published at the start of the 2020-21 season. It runs from the Orchard Welsh Premier League at tier one -…
Other p.35
The Northern Irish section of the magazine's four-nation reference guide to the women's league pyramid at the start of the 2020-21 season, and the page that carries the compilation's explanation: the guide exists so…
Other pp.36–37
The English section of the magazine's four-nation reference guide, and by a distance the largest: ten tiers, from the twelve Barclays FA Women's Super League clubs down through the Championship, the two FA Women's…
Other p.38
The Scottish section of the magazine's four-nation reference guide to the women's league pyramid for 2020-21. Scottish Premier 1 sits at tier one with Celtic, Forfar Farmington, Glasgow City, Hearts, Hibernian, Motherwell, Rangers and…
Cover feature pp.39–43
England's second goalkeeper across six major tournaments talks through a career that ended when the prospect of long spells away from her daughter Emilia made the decision for her. She is unusually clear-eyed about…
Interview pp.44–45
Crystal Palace's goalkeeper takes the magazine's regular goalkeepers' questionnaire, and brings an unusual route to it: she was a right-back until she was twenty-two, when her team's keeper dislocated a knee mid-match and somebody…
Run-of-page feature pp.46–47
Crawley Wasps were top of the FA Women's National League Southern Premier Division when the 2019-20 season was suspended, after back-to-back promotions in 2018 and 2019, and their captain Naomi Cole was the club's…
Interview pp.48–51
Houston Dash had never reached an NWSL play-off in six seasons before winning the 2020 Challenge Cup in Utah, and their English head coach is clear about how. He told the players they did…
Interview pp.49–51
The magazine's regular coaches' questionnaire, taken by the coach who had just won Houston Dash their first trophy. His favourite thing to deliver is transition, and transition to goal above all, because he wants…
Interview pp.52–54
New Zealand's goalkeeper honoured her Bordeaux contract before joining Reading in August, and arrived in temporary accommodation with no television - so she bought a guitar off Facebook Marketplace and started teaching herself the…
Run-of-page feature pp.55–59
Glasgow City's strength and conditioning coach was flying home from a Scotland camp on 11 March when the pandemic stopped everything, and this article is his account of what six months without football did…
Interview pp.56–58
Two Glasgow City players describe what returning from lockdown actually felt like. Zaneta Wyne spent it out of contract in California, lifting three-gallon water jugs because the gyms were shut, and adding yoga, mountain…
Interview pp.60–61
Brighton's captain is disarmingly honest about a role she says she never saw herself taking. Hope Powell handed her the armband and it genuinely shocked her; she is vocal and loud on the pitch,…
Interview pp.62–63
Birmingham City's attacking midfielder, back in England after a four-year scholarship at St John's, walks through her matchday. She keeps the same meal every time: Weetabix and coffee for an afternoon kick-off, then a…
Interview pp.63–65
Bristol City's Scottish forward takes the magazine's food questionnaire and answers it with some conviction. Avocado is out, on texture rather than taste; she used to hate fish and made herself eat it, but…
Interview p.64
Manchester City's midfielder answers the magazine's regular questions about her car, and gives away that she coaches as well as plays: the five things always in it are footballs, cones, boots and their smell,…
Interview p.65
Sheffield United's left-back, twenty-one and re-signed after an injury-affected year, submits to a survey of her boots and shirts. Her first boots took a Google search to identify: 2002 Nike Total 90 IIs, with…
Other p.66
The Little Kicks page gives itself over to a book rather than to readers' photographs this issue, and the reason is a genuine first: Rocky, the final title of the rebooted Roy of the…
Other p.66
The fifth consecutive instalment of Saving Grace, the strip about a young, football-mad goalkeeper drawn by the magazine's regular cartoonist Steve English. It runs along the foot of the Little Kicks page, this issue…
Other p.67
Ava Sinead Phillips turns ten on 10 October, plays for Burnham Wildcats, supports Fulham and holds a Reading Women season ticket she cannot wait to use again, along with her younger brother Shay. She…
Interview pp.68–69
Eleven-year-old Grace Wilson of Hillsborough Girls FC in Lisburn, who won a mascot competition to lead Northern Ireland out alongside Sarah Robson against Norway, puts six questions to the Durham midfielder who inspires her.…
Other p.70
The issue's puzzle page runs two games, and both are of their moment. Spot the Difference uses a photograph of Nikita Parris with the Champions League trophy after Lyon's fifth consecutive title - a…
