Lucy Bronze: 'I'm shocked girls still can't play football at school'

In her exclusive column for GiveMeSport Women, England and Manchester City superstar Lucy Bronze discusses her experiences of playing football at school and the importance of the FA’s Let Girls Play campaign.

When I was growing up, I was the only girl in the school that played football. In fact, I was the only girl that played in the entire area!

I played for a boys’ team until I was 12, and it wasn’t too bad really. Sometimes there would be little comments from opposing players about a girl being with the team, but I never really paid any attention.

I was lucky that my brother, who is two years older than me, encouraged me to play with him and his friends at breaktime and after school. A lot of my best friends were boys too, so I’d also play with them.

But things started to change when I moved out of a rural area and went to secondary school.

At secondary school, boys and girls got split up for the majority of sports, so I would normally play netball and hockey, or do athletics. I didn’t get to play football in a lesson at school from about Year Five onwards.

At one point, it got really ridiculous. I did PE at GCSE and A-Level, and everyone had to be assessed on the sports they had chosen.

I had picked football, and was playing for England Under-17s at the time, but the boys’ PE teacher said I couldn’t do the assessment.

It was lucky because my Mum worked at my school as a maths teacher, and she managed to convince him to let me do the assessment with the boys. After it was finished, the teacher even told my Mum that I was better than everyone else!

I was fortunate that I had my Mum to fight my battles for me. When I was younger, things like that never really bothered me. I couldn’t play with the boys when I was 12, and