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A pink hoodie and a clear head

 

Tracey Crouch

 

Tracey Crouch finds coaching under-11 girls football gives her a 90-minute escape from politics and work

 

I love Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. I take off my City girl suit, or my Tory candidate outfit, and I put on a tracksuit, some football socks, pull on a pink hoodie and become Tracey Crouch, coach to Meridian Girls Under-11s.

 

For a few short hours every week I stop worrying about my job or what candidate things I need to do, and think about where I should be putting the cones or what drill we are going to do.

 

Or, at least, that is what I tell myself I am thinking about. Actually, with half a dozen hyperactive under 11-year-old girls who haven't seen each other for several days, it is difficult to think about anything other than how to get them to stop talking, listen to what you are saying and then watch them nonchalantly execute the drill, before they return to the back of the line to continue whatever it is that under-11 girls talk about.

 

The club where I coach is all-girls, unlike many teams, and not affiliated with a boys' team. I was never coached to play football. In fact, when we did PE at primary school, I wasn't allowed to play football with the boys. I had to do netball with the girls. It wasn't until university that I had my first real football training session.

 

Until then I had just played in the street with boys from the neighbourhood and, as it turned out, I wasn't too bad. At university I played either up front or on the wings – I was all legs, couldn't head the ball for toffee and was usually the cleanest player to leave the pitch.

 

But over the years I scored a decent number of goals and am still proud of my golden boot trophy and the number of 'keepie-uppies' I can do! I gave up playing a few years ago when I was chief of staff to David Davis because I could no longer commit the time. I'd get back in the car after a Sunday game and have a number of missed calls which I would frantically have to deal with – usually too late.

But I missed football so much that when I started a job with more regular hours I took my FA coaching badge. I wanted to be part of the game again, and what better than to try to teach and inspire the next generation of young female footballers.

 

I come away exhausted from every training session and match – but it is wonderful. As I stand on the sideline with the parents early on a Sunday morning, I am making in my head every pass, run and shot with the girls. I jump high when they score, clap loud when they make a sublime pass, shout well done when they surprise us all with a turn I don't think we ever coached, and encourage them to keep their heads up when they concede a goal. The hardest part is to choose the three players that get to keep the trophies until the following Sunday. In my mind they all play brilliantly every week, whatever the score.

 

After the girls head home to watch cartoons or do their homework, I throw my football boots in the back of the car and realise I haven't thought about work or politics for at least 90 minutes. And then I turn on my ignition and my radio, the other half of my brain starts up and I forget about the football, the girls, the turns, the shots on or off target and start thinking about my task list, the house I am buying, or the newspaper article I need to write. But, because of my 90 minutes of down time watching a bunch of crazy, funny, enthusiastic girls run around after a football come rain or shine, my head is usually a lot clearer as a result.

 

Tracey Crouch is Conservative PPC for Chatham and Aylesford in Kent