Club history

2020: a group of beginners

Lions FC Girls came into existence in January 2020, with a group of girls aged eight to ten from Berkeley International School in Bangkok. Coach Joe, Joe Derham, one of the fathers, founded it with one aim: more opportunities for girls to play football in their city. The girls were beginners, and they wanted to get better.

The first six months were the pandemic. Playing at school was not possible, so the group trained wherever and whenever it could. It grew, and for a while it was a mixed group of girls and boys who played together. SoccerPro Bangna became the home ground, and it still is.

One match from that first year is still talked about: a practice game against the Juventus academy, which was also based at SoccerPro Bangna. It gave the girls a taste for playing other academies and for harder matches. By the end of the year the club had more than sixteen players, and in 2021 it was reorganised into two teams, Lions FC Girls and Lions FC Boys.

2021/22: the first season of matches

Finding opponents during the pandemic, when most clubs and schools had stopped playing, was the hardest part. The team trained twice a week and played anyone who would take the field, travelling to other provinces when it had to. The squad settled at twelve players.

That season the girls played more than twenty matches, beat several much larger schools, and won their first tournament.

2022/23: forty matches and three trophies

In the summer of 2022 the club put a new management structure in place and appointed a head coach. The team changed with it: fast, attacking football in front of an organised defence.

The 2022/23 season was the biggest the club has played: more than forty matches against schools and academies, and three consecutive tournament wins, including all three Harrow tournaments in one season. It was also the season of the club’s first international tournament, against teams from Singapore and Hong Kong, from which the girls came home with the sportsmanship award. Second place in Hua Hin and third in Pattaya followed in May, both settled on penalties.

Coach Joe had set himself a goal in 2020: a team that could compete with any other in Thailand within three years. Three years on, it could.

2023/24: the last tournament season

New players came in and a younger squad took the pitch. It finished third in the under-15 category at the Harrow Youth Cup in November 2023, a podium in an age group above its own, and in January 2024 played at the Bangkok International Girls Football Festival alongside forty-five teams from across South East Asia. The club’s last tournaments as a club were the Harrow International 7s and the Rugby Football Festival in the spring of 2024.