Harold Hill girls' football centre launches new specially-designed kit

Kat Clifton, founder of She Can Play, has been designing the kit for the past year and launched it last Monday, January 10, at the club’s base at Noak Hill Sports Centre.

The kit, which will be worn by players at the She Can Play football development centre, will sport the logos of seven female-owned and mostly Essex-based businesses which are sponsoring the club.

Some of the women behind the sponsoring companies attended the kit launch last week and the children asked them questions about their experience as entrepreneurs.

Kat, 31, said: “The main reason behind this is if you can see it, you can be it and I want our players to know they can be anyone they want to be.”

She Can Play (Image: Carmel Jane)

She Can Play helps develop talented young female footballers across Essex. (Image: Carmel Jane)

The kit had been specially designed with women in mind. (Image: She Can Play)

Robyn Downie from Lu Palmer, Natalie Doyle from Sport Sister, Sporty Paws and Carly Eagles from Sports4Tots, and Debbie Davenport from White Lace Events take part in a Q&A. (Image: She Can Play)

The businesses and charities sponsoring She Can Play include Sport Sister, Sports4Tots, White Lace Events, Lu Palmer, NAB Consulting, Right to Dream and Bull Dog Rescue.

Kat set the club up in 2016 as a way of providing opportunities for young girls to play football at a higher level.

Since then, the club has partnered with the Essex FA to deliver a development centre for more than 100 female players from under-10s to under-16s level.

More than 20 of their players have subsequently moved on to professional clubs such as Arsenal, Charlton, Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea.

Kat said the standard had improved “ten-fold” since she started: “All the players in our teams are trialled and they are the best in the county.”

She said the kit had been specially designed with women in mind.

The She Can Play players with Sporty Paws and Carly Eagles from Sports4Tots (Image: She Can Play)

Natalie Doyle from Sport Sister, Sporty Paws and Carly Eagles from Sports4Tots, Debbie Davenport from White Lace Events, She Can Play founder Kat Clifton, and Robyn Downie from Lu Palmer. (Image: She Can Play)

Q&A with business owners (Image: She Can Play)

“Our football kit is designed by women, for women and it is all in girls' sizes,” she said.

“What you will find is the big brands, they still don’t have women’s sizes.

“A ten-year-old girl will have the go buy extra-large boys and that is [building] unconscious bias from when they were little that football was a boy’s sport.”

The kit was intended for use by players at the development centre, but Kat said they had received enquiries from as far away as Scotland from people looking for high-quality football kits for girls.