Alternative Football

Founder: Bethany Barnes

Friendship and football for all at the heart of new inclusive league

The North West’s first and only fully inclusive football league for female and non-binary transgender people has its sights on national and international expansion thanks to MEC.

Every Wednesday teams from the Alternative Football League gather to play fun and informal football aimed at beginners or those returning to the beautiful game.

But for many players the midweek diary fixture is more than just a chance to have a kickabout and get some exercise, as founder Beth Barnes explains:

“We’ve had a couple of players who’ve said it’s lifesaving.

“They were struggling with some challenges and difficulties in their life and since joining us they have their own family in their team, they feel welcome and accepted for who they are instead of having to fit into someone else’s idea of what they should be.

“Alternative Football is all about inclusion, the social aspect of sport, friendliness, turning up and feeling welcome from the get go. We just provide a fun and easy place to play football. No one has to earn their place. It’s about everyone having a nice friendly time together with no aggression, no questions and no barriers.”

After rapid growth over the last year the League now has 250 players across 20 teams and is about to expand from Manchester into Liverpool.

Alternative Football is also looking to take its unique form of inclusive football and scale it up after Beth had her ambitions raised by MEC.

She said: “We want to be nationwide in the next few years and potentially global. It was MEC that first mentioned the idea creating a Community Interest Company (C.I.C.) and I laughed the first time I heard that.

“I thought it was ludicrous even suggesting that, and I thought everyone would laugh at me for thinking we could take this football league and take it national or worldwide.

“But MEC encouraged me to think bigger and ever since I’ve been confident about it going nationwide one day – and no one’s laughed at me!

“The more experience I got, the more workshops I attended and the more I concentrated and focused on the business I realised we could make this really big.”

The turning point for Alternative Football came when the league won first place in the 2022 Venture Further Business Start-up Competition (Social Enterprise Category).

Venture Further is the flagship annual start-up competition for all current students, researchers and recent graduates across The University of Manchester. The competition opens up a world of support programmes, workshops, mentors and networks to nurture and grow ideas.

Beth, who is a University of Manchester third year cell biology Ph.D. student, said: “The £10,000 prize money meant we had the funds to make Alternative Football bigger and better. I had no business experience prior to Venture Further. I was just a football player and science nerd and saw an opportunity.”

So far, the prize money has been spent on setting up a new league and investing in social media and SEO development.

Alternative Football reinvests its profits into inclusivity and mental health workshops for women in football and some of the cash will be used to train up workshop facilitators.

Alongside the welcome cash boost, MEC offered Beth the chance to attend workshops on budgeting, PR and pitching as well as helping her to overcome her public speaking fears.

“My biggest challenge was public speaking – I hated it,” said Beth.

“Networking would fill me with fear, I’d sit in a corner and sip my drink. I’m very introverted so at first it was terrifying but MEC would invite me to sit in on events, then speak at them and they really helped me out with networking by introducing me to people who might be relevant.