Yesterday it was announced that Teeside-based football club, Thornaby FC, had made the decision to axe their women’s program from Under 7s, all the way up to their Senior side.

“Yesterday we found out that a majority of the Thornaby FC committe, led by Trevor Wing, voted to remove the entire female section from the club” said Thornaby FC Women via social media.

“This leaves over 100 girls without a club. We are are all devastated to hear of the Thornaby FC decision and would like to thank the members of the club who voted to keep female football.”

As per BCC, first team manager Abbey Lyle expressed that she was ‘floored by the decision.’

“We’ve got girls who have really progressed this season, we were looking forward to presentation night but now we don’t have a venue to host it at as we’re not allowed to go to the ground.”

Over the course of recent years, we have seen women’s football at the centre of exponential growth a large numbers of fans continue to pile through the turnstiles in rising handfuls. England has been at the centre of the ‘boom’, after the Lionesses brought football home on the home soil of Wembley Stadium in the 2022 European Championships. Though as women’s football continues to reach new heights, the actions of the board at Thornaby FC are a sad indictment of the mountainous amount of work that is still left to be done.

Football at a grassroots level continues to be the beating heart of England’s communal nervous system- yet women continue to be overlooked and under-funded when it comes to financial and organisational decisions being made by club boards.

England and Arsenal star, Beth Mead, expressed her great disappointment in the matter when she took to X, expressing “Disgusted to see this decision, the women’s game is on the up but we still have committees making these horrible decisions. It’s not good enough, these young girls deserve better.”

Recent information provided by BBC Sport Teeside reported that “The six board members who voted to scrap Thornaby FC’s women’s teams have now stepped down. Only Phil Genery and chairman, Gary Morris, remain. They plan to build a new diverse and wide-ranging board alongside representatives from the women’s team.”

It is unconfirmed whether Thornaby FC will revoke their decision to discontinue their women’s program.