Women’s Team with Five Male Players Wins Football Competition After One Male Player “Broke Opponent’s Leg” – But Teams Who Refuse to Play Against Them Are Branded “Discriminatory”

A women’s football competition has been branded misogynist after it was won by a team featuring five transgender players, amid accusations one had broken an opponent’s leg in two places. The Telegraph has more.

Flying Bats FC won every match they played during the four-week Beryl Ackroyd Cup, including a 10-0 victory in which one of their trans players scored a double hat-trick.

Since winning Sunday’s final in Sydney, Australia, 4-0, it has emerged that organisers had earlier held a crisis meeting, during which rival teams were warned that forfeiting games against the Bats would result in disciplinary action and could even be viewed as “an act of discrimination”.

The same meeting included accusations that a 6ft 2in, 14st Bats player had once broken the leg of 5ft 6in, nine-and-a-half stone opponent in two places and claims 24 of the injured player’s team-mates had quit because they did not want to face the LGBTQ+ side.

Flying Bats went on to win the $1,000 (£514) first prize on Sunday.

One senior club official was quoted by Australia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper saying: “Our girls are here to play for fun and expect to play in the female competition. They did not sign up for a mixed competition.

“Some of the parents were so concerned they would not let their daughters play.

“It was so disheartening for them to see the huge ­difference in ability – they’re killing it.”

In Australian grass-roots football, trans women are allowed to participate in female competition.

John Ruddick, an MP in the country’s Parliament, said: “It’s not just a question of fair sportsmanship. It’s also a question of physical safety for female players born female.”

Ruddick also posted on his X account what he said was leaked audio from crisis talks last Wednesday convened by North West Sydney Football, at which one club president could be heard stating: “A couple of years ago, one of the Flying Bats players broke one of our players’ legs in a game. She’s no longer playing football.

“This could have been avoided because my 5ft 6in player, who didn’t even weigh 60 kilos, against a 6ft 2in player, who was 89 kilos, in a really bad crunching tackle broke her leg.”

He went on to say he had “lost 24 players” who had told him they did not “want to play against the Bats players”.

Worth reading in full.