'I wouldn't play football without LGBTQ+ side'

The founder of Guernsey's first LGBTQ+ football team is hoping more people will join them.

Jack Ingrouille came up with the idea for Liberate Pride to be a six-a-side weekly social kick-about. Six months later, the team has leaped into a league side which plays in Guernsey's Leisure Leagues.

Ingrouille said it was "surreal" to see the side's growth over the last six months and said he hoped more people would join.

"We want to get more people coming to our training sessions, get more people playing in this league. We are ostensibly an LGBTQ+ football club, but I also want it to be a place for people with anxiety who want to come into football in a low pressure environment", he said.

Ingrouille said the team grew from his personal quest to play football to becoming part of a league playing on Wednesday nights.

"I was looking for somewhere to play football," he said.

"I played all the time when I was a kid but as I got into adult life, I kind of of drifted away from it for whatever reason.

"I was nervous about potentially coming back into an all-male, quite masculine environment because that's just something I struggle with and I didn't know really where to go."

After seeing LGBTQ+ teams play in the UK on social media, Ingrouille said his idea for a team was greeted with enthusiasm by Channel Islands' equality and diversity charity Liberate.

Ellie Jones, Liberate chief executive, said it was great to see those taking part grow in confidence.

"Some people have never played before so it's a real kind of baptism of fire I guess.

"But seeing people come together as a team, support each other and really get involved is always a privilege to watch.

"I think now, especially with the global rise of anti trans rhetoric, we really need to have those spaces where people feel safe and supported and they know they'll be protected if they face any sort of discrimination," she said.

Leisure Leagues supervisor Mark Fallaize said it was "absolutely brilliant" to have the team involved, and they were improving every week.

"It doesn't matter about the score...you come off still smiling, still laughing, you can't get better than that after half an hour of football. They love it".

Goalkeeper Kaci Pratt said he saw the group's kick-about session promoted on Facebook and had been with the team ever since.

"I'm meeting new people that are like me and its just nice to be a part of the group and the team," he said.

Ingrouille said while football had come a long way with national coverage of LGBTQ+ in football, along with campaigns such as rainbow laces, the debate around trans people in sport was "difficult to take" and why "spaces" like Liberate Pride were needed.

"I think once people actually are exposed to trans people in sport, exposed to queerness in general, they realise, oh, we're just people and we just want to play the sport the same way that everyone else does, we're not scary," he said.

"Everyone has been so accommodating and welcoming and accepting, which I was nervous about. It's been entirely positive."

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