On any given Sunday during the winter soccer season on the Northern Beaches, you’ll find a women’s football team surrounded by opposition half their age. That team is the Narrabeen WAL01’s – The top division of the Women’s Amateur League. These women are anything but amateur though. This league sits just under the Premier League, and is packed with talent. While the standard is high, what makes this team different isn’t just how they play, but who they are.
What you won’t see at first glance is that this team has 47 children between them, an average age over 40, and stories that stretch far beyond the pitch.
These women are corporate executives, business owners, teachers, healthcare workers, creatives, wives, partners, single mums. Women working full-time, part time, studying full time, part-time, rebuilding careers, and juggling the many demands of life. Some once played at Premier League and representative level. Many have returned to football after years away. All have found their way back to the game as a fiercely proud, supportive unit, and above all best friends.
Between these women are stories of resilience that don’t often make the sports pages. Among them are cancer survivors, women who have nursed and lost family, overcome addiction, endured major surgeries, navigated grief, rebuilt through heartbreak and separation. Every one of them carries something that has shaped how and why they show up to this sport, and for each other.
Not long ago, there was an over-30s women’s competition on the Northern Beaches, a space for women returning to sport after having children. When that disappeared, so did a natural home for players like this. Now, instead of stepping back, they’ve stepped up for another season into a high-level open competition against much younger opponents.
Training after long workdays. They arrive at games with kids in tow, juggling shin pads, colouring books and snack boxes. Behind the scenes are partners, families and support networks helping make this possible – Stepping in so these ladies can step onto the field, carving out time for themselves in lives otherwise spent giving to everyone else.
This story isn’t just about football.
It’s about belonging. It’s about friendship. It’s about showing our children, and the younger generations lining the sidelines across the Beaches, that age doesn’t define what your body can do, and that becoming a mum doesn’t mean stepping away from yourself.
These women are not just here to compete. They’re here to represent something bigger – resilience, community, and the belief that it’s never too late to push yourself, reconnect with who you are, and stand alongside women who lift each other up.
This feels like a story that belongs to our community, about women who refuse to quietly fade into the background and instead choose to lace up and take on the best… And we are incredibly proud.
