Carol Bates.
Carol has always had a love of football since the age of 7 when she used to watch her Dad play every Saturday afternoon. Getting involved in various activities in football, such as making the teas and washing the kit in her teens, managing a men’s team in the 90s, being a club Secretary for 10 years, being Chair of the Crawley Town Supporters Trust, just watching her 2 boys play, talking and reading about football, Carol never had the chance to actually play and was one of the “missed generation” of women who didn’t get the opportunity to play, due to The FA’s ban. Growing up in the 70s, football wasn’t for girls.
However, being a massive Crawley Town fan, in 2015, Carol founded the Crawley Old Girls (COGS) and, with the help of the Crawley Town Community Foundation, set up a pioneering session for “older” women to learn to play football. This was funded for 10 weeks and is still going strong, along with 5 other sessions that have been added, since. The COGS have been involved with The FA for many promotional activities to get more women involved in recreational football and Carol was part of the WEURO2022 Legacy Programme to help encourage more women to participate, via the host cities. In 2021, Carol was awarded the British Empire Medal in The Queens’ Birthday Honours for “Services to Football and Inclusion”. The COGS were also awarded a number of local and national awards for the impact on increasing participation for women in recreational football.
Having seen the impact that starting to learn to play football played on many older women and the very low representation in the media of any relatable imagery, Carol knows, from lived experience, of the many benefits of getting active at a later age brings and thought that not enough women have that information or know that they too belong in sport.
In 2020, Carol purchased the website oldgirlsplaytoo.co.uk and started to think about how to create a movement to inspire, educate and empower women 40+ to change their lives through recreational sport because not all women would want to play football. In July 2025, Old Girls Play Too really started to take off and on Boxing Day 2025, Carol was the proud owner of the Intellectual Property for Old Girls Play Too, along with the trademarks for the brand and merchandise. There has been a lot of work done since then and Old Girls Play Too will be a Community Interest Company to increase the social impact of getting women 40+ active. So much to do now!