Grassroots Sports

The coach in question is Oma Adegwai, who got involved with the team after completing the first couple of steps in her coaching career - which is doable in a couple of weekends. However, despite there being a quickly growing number of female footballers in Suffolk, there are still very few coaches. St John's Under 12's have never played against another team with a female coach, but Oma says the reactions is usually good.

Most of the teams are coached by the fathers of the players, who get involved by default. Stephen Wade is coach of the Under 15's - when the team asked around for more coaches, he was the only who volunteered.

But this is not stopping people getting involved - the Suffolk FA is trying to get more children involved in football, and there are now 75 girls' teams in the county, playing competitive football every week, with a thousand girls across age ranges from under 10's to under 15's.

The next step is to get girls involved from childhood, through school, and into adulthood. But things are looking up - as Kate Steed, from the Suffolk FA, says "if a girl is interested, she's now got somewhere to play".