'The Challenge': training with Sudan's fearless female footballers

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/sep/09/sudan-female-footballers-the-challenge

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On a dirt pitch next to Khartoum airport, Sara Edward watches the players she hopes to mould into Sudan’s first national women’s football team.

Honing their skills and kicking up clouds of dust, the 15 players have taken the name “The Challenge”, a reference to the obstacles they face – no equipment, no funding and the suspicions of Sudan’s Islamist authorities.

“We hope this team will become international,” Edward said as she watched the women practising, jet planes screaming overhead. “We’re no worse than anyone else. We just lack opportunities.”

Darting about the pitch in her worn green jersey and shorts, the diminutive Edward is the motor behind the team she’s been a part of since 2001, when it was first formed at Khartoum’s Comboni College.

As dusk falls at the training session, temperatures hover around 40C, but wearing shorts and t-shirts isn’t a decision the girls on the team can take lightly.

Despite the heat, two of the players train in long trousers and sleeves, which Edward links to the team’s broader challenges. “Sudanese society says women are not supposed to wear shorts,” Edward said. “In other sports, such as volleyball, they make them wear long trousers when they play.”

In 1983 Sudan’s government implemented Sharia law, and when President Omar al-Bashir seized power in a 1989 Islamist-backed coup, his government vowed to continue implementing it.

Related: Outrage as 9 Sudanese women face 40 lashes for wearing trousers

Today, Sudan’s criminal code bans women from wearing “indecent” clothes with a punishment of 40 lashes or a fine. In July, a group of 9 young Christian women from the South Kordofan region were arrested for wearing skirts and trousers.

Four were fined, while one was sentenced to 20 lashes for wearing trousers to court for her sentencing, which she is now appealing.

The law has never been applied to The Challenge’s players, but Edward suspects the government’s Islamist leanings have contributed to the neglect of women’s football.

In 2011, the team moved to pitches of the Sudanese Football Association, who Edward said pledged to help with training and equipment.

But the organisation failed to deliver on its promises, and the team have since been forced to moved on, buffeted from training ground to training ground.

Hasan Abu Jabal, the Sudanese FA’s executive secretary, said there are women’s teams in universities and some schools. “We are trying to support them to practise the sport according to rules that take into account social customs,” he said.

‘A sport for boys’

The Challenge has also faced difficulties with family attitudes, including the team’s wiry roving midfielder, Nedal Fadlalah, who joined in 2002.

Her family migrated to Khartoum from war-torn South Kordofan seeking a better life, like many of her team-mates. Growing up, she played football with brothers and cousins and rushed to join the team, despite opposition from relatives.

“Some members of the family opposed me playing football because I’m a girl – they thought football is a boys’ sport,” she said.

Edward has heard others are trying to form women’s teams elsewhere but for the moment The Challenge plays local men’s sides to hone their skills.

She wants the team to represent Sudan in a championship, but failing that she has longer term plans to try to build a national women’s team.

Several members have trained abroad to become coaches, which they plan to put to good use. “If I have 10 players who became coaches, in two years we could have 10 teams for women in Sudan and in two years these 10 teams could produce a national team,” she said.

“And if Sudan gave us the opportunity to become the national team, no one will refuse,” she added, with a laugh.