Sutton United, who this year appointed Lucy Clark as the first transgender manager in the top five tiers of the English female game, have ignited controversy by signing a biologically male goalkeeper for their women’s team.
Blair Hamilton, 34, has been recruited by Clark despite having previously drawn criticism from women’s rights groups for taking the place of a female goalkeeper. Sharron Davies, the former Olympic silver medallist and long-standing advocate for fairness for women in sport, described Sutton’s move as “shameful”.
Confirming the signing, the club announced: “We are delighted to welcome Blair Hamilton to Sutton United. Blair made her debut, keeping a clean sheet in a 6-0 victory. Blair has previously played for Hastings United, Saltdean, and has also represented England Universities.”
But the decision has not been universally welcomed, with Davies revealing that a letter had been sent to her expressing concerns over Hamilton. “We wish to be anonymous due to threats I know we will get,” the letter read. “The women’s team hired transgender [former] referee Lucy Clark with no previous experience in women’s football.
‘Pushing women out of women’s football’
“Now Clark has signed Hamilton, a 6ft, 34-year-old trans goalkeeper, and the female goalkeeper has been let go. The club need to be held accountable for pushing women out of women’s football. It’s disgusting.”
“I get emails like this every single day,” Davies said. “It is bloody shameful.”
Sutton Women hit the headlines in January when they put Clark in charge even though the 51-year-old had never managed in the women’s game. On the prospect of receiving abuse, Clark said: “I’m prepared to deal with it, should it happen, so we crack on. I’m not going to stop doing something I love because of who I am.”
In May, JK Rowling highlighted Clark’s unlikely elevation, writing sarcastically: “When I was young, all the football managers were straight, white, middle-aged blokes, so it’s fantastic to see how much things have changed.” When she was accused by trans activists of bullying, the author doubled down, saying: “Calling a man a man is not ‘bullying’ or ‘punching down.’ Women are under no obligation to applaud the people caricaturing us.”
When I was young all the football managers were straight, white, middle-aged blokes, so it’s fantastic to see how much things have changed. https://t.co/jx9zp0hRyU
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 11, 2024
Hamilton controversies
Clark’s recruitment of Hamilton intensifies the controversy, given that the goalkeeper has already drawn intense criticism for competing in other women’s sides. When they represented Hastings United Women in 2022, the local chapter of the Women’s Rights Network staged a demonstration, arguing that Hamilton’s involvement was unfair to female opponents.
On the player’s call-up for England Universities the same year, Maya Forstater, co-founder of Sex Matters, wrote: “Women will lose out from being on the squad and will also potentially be put under pressure not to speak up about it.”
In 2022, before joining Sutton, Clark wrote on social media: “At some point we will field a team solely of trans women for the first time in history. How good is that?”
Hamilton is an academic whose primary research interest is the effect of testosterone suppression on the athletic performance of transgender athletes. In April, the former University of Brighton student published a paper claiming that athletes who had gone through male puberty but identified as female were at a “disadvantage” compared to biological women and that they performed worse in certain cardiovascular tests.
In response, Ross Tucker, a sports scientist, argued that unathletic biological males had been wrongly compared with significantly fitter women, saying: “The study contributes basically nothing to our understanding of retained advantage.”
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