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Hackney Marshes cover 60 windswept acres of the eastern fringes of the borough, set between the River Lea and the Lea Navigational Canal. Every Sunday throughout the football season this desolate setting is the scene of sporting confrontation when teams from eight leagues including The Asian League, The Turkish League, The Kurdish League, and The Christian League, battle for supremacy on 82 council maintained football pitches.

Hackney Women’s Football Club (HWFC) play their football in Division One of the Greater London Women’s League (the women’s equivalent of the Vauxhall Conference League) and fulfil their home fixtures on Hackney Marshes. Promoted as champions from Division Two last season, the girls are holding their own in the first division, and at the time of going to press are in 3rd place after 10 games. N16 will keep you up to date with their progress.

I had lunch with Kim Watson, the media officer for HWFC at the Bull and Last on Highgate Road close to her office where she works as marketing director for a publishing house. Kim told me that the club was formed in 1986 to offer local women the chance to play competitive football regardless of their ethnic origin or sexual orientation, and to encourage enjoyment from training and social occasions. Training is at Haggerston Park in the winter, and Clissold Park in the summer. Their coach Alfie Ferguson, a Man United supporter, and therefore referred to as ‘Sir Alex’, takes charge of training sessions.

‘Training lasts for 2 hours. We don’t see a ball for 30 minutes, when we work on stretching and fitness. This is followed by a two-touch session, and then a one-touch session and finally 30 minutes working on set pieces and heading.’ The players, their families and friends regularly get together off the pitch. Kim said she has met four of her best friends through playing football.

Kim supports Arsenal ladies and was euphoric about the skills of Kirsty Pealling, the club’s right wing back. The nearest she had come to meeting her favourite woman player was in a fun 5-a-side tournament in Camden. ‘HWFC with Kim in goal got to the final and faced a team made up of employees of Camden Leisure Centre - including Kirsty’, she said. ‘It went to penalties and Kirsty got the winner. She hit the ball to my right. I almost got to it, but she hit it too hard.’

Early the same evening I met Kirsty Pealing at the Pub on the Park on London Fields. Kirsty grew up in Orwell Court close to Broadway Market where she played football with her brother and his friends. At Haggerston Secondary School, she said ‘we had a wonderful PE teacher Annie Carmichael who responded to the girls enthusiasm for football by organising 5-a-side matches against other schools’.

In 1988 Haggerston entered a girls 5-a-side tournament organised by the Metropolitan Police. They got through the group stages at Hendon, won the semi-final at the Britannia Leisure Centre, and then the final at Wembley Indoor Arena. It was here that 13 year old Kirsty was spotted by Vic Ackers manager of the nascent  Arsenal Ladies Football Club. Now 28, Kirsty is an England international with 15 caps, and the longest serving member of Arsenal Ladies team that have won 17 trophies in their 15-year history including 5 premiership titles.

When asked about the final of the pre-season 5-a-side tournament in Camden she said ‘I got the winning penalty’, and added ‘I hit hard to the keeper’s right but she was good and for a moment I thought she was going to get to it’.

Kirsty still lives in Hackney, not far from where Kim lives in Walthamstow. A veteran of Hackney Ladies at 39, Kim is now enjoying the more sedate pace of Division Two of the Greater London Women’s League while representing HWFC reserves. Kirsty has just returned from Moscow where England Ladies drew 2-2 with Russia. On this occasion she was on the bench.

N16 wishes both girls a successful season.

www.intheteam.com/hackneywfc