Ladies’s soccer match is postponed after outrage over group signing a 34-year-old transgender goalkeeper, who was chosen by the league’s first ever trans supervisor

Sutton United’s away sport at Ebbsfleet within the London and South East Regional Ladies’s League was postponed on Sunday amid controversy centred on a transgender goalkeeper.

The sport, which had been scheduled to kick-off at 2pm, was known as off after Sutton despatched an electronic mail to their opponents at 11.12am informing them of their incapacity to discipline a group.

Sunday’s postponement got here per week after Sutton boss Lucy Clark – who’s the primary transgender supervisor within the prime 5 tiers of girls’s soccer in England – signed 34-year-old transgender goalkeeper Blair Hamilton.

Hamilton – who beforehand performed for the College of Aberdeen’s males’s soccer group whereas she was transitioning, earlier than being inspired to hitch the ladies’s facet – made her Sutton debut on August 25 in a 6-0 win over Haywards Heath City.

Nonetheless, the membership didn’t announce her arrival till after that sport.

Since Sutton’s issued a brief assertion confirming her arrival, Hamilton and the membership have been met with a combined response.

That assertion had learn: ‘We’re delighted to welcome Blair Hamilton to Sutton United. Blair made her debut, preserving a clear sheet in a 6-0 victory. Blair has beforehand performed for Hastings United, Saltdean, and has additionally represented England Universities.’ 

Former Workforce GB swimmer Sharron Davies – who received an Olympic silver medal in 1980 – has beforehand made it clear that she is towards trans girls competing towards cisgender girls beneath the banner of girls’s sport.

Davies described Sutton signing Hamilton as ‘shameful’.

She additionally claimed that she was despatched a letter from soccer followers expressing their issues.

The letter apparently learn: ‘We want to be nameless because of threats I do know we are going to get. The ladies’s group employed transgender [former] referee Lucy Clark with no earlier expertise in girls’s soccer. 

‘Now Clark has signed Hamilton, a 6ft, 34-year-old trans goalkeeper, and the feminine goalkeeper has been let go. The membership have to be held accountable for pushing girls out of girls’s soccer. It is disgusting.’

Though not confirmed, it’s thought that Sunday’s sport might have been postponed after a few of Hamilton’s team-mates refused to play in protest at her signing.

The membership introduced the postponement of the sport with a brief publish on X (previously Twitter). It merely learn: ‘In the present day’s match towards @EbbsfleetWomen has been postponed.’

In reply, one remark learn: ‘Effectively performed girls for standing your floor.’

Hamilton spoke to the BBC in 2019 when she mentioned: ‘I knew I used to be transgender since I used to be 4. Rising up within the west coast of Scotland, I sort of tried to cover it slightly bit.

‘The College of Aberdeen’s girls’s soccer group took me like beneath their wing and mentioned “why do not you come and be part of us?” Which is one thing which I by no means truly thought was doable.’

On the time of her BBC interview, Hamilton had been present process hormone remedy for 3 years. ‘They want to take a look at the science, what it truly does to your physique,’ she added.

‘It does take away your muscle mass, your explosiveness. Your ratios from type-one to type-two fast-twitch fibres change – your physique fully adjustments. I do not suppose they realise how a lot of a change hormone remedy makes.

‘There may be completely no benefit on the pitch.’