How Afghanistan women’s football teammade it to Australia
Peshawar Football Club’s women’s team made the journey to Australia to face the Sydney Roosters in a test match. The team faced the biggest challenge, not the one they were expecting, the Roosters.
The main problem was finding a place to practise in Australia. The Peshawar club was originally based in Peshawar Pakistan. It made the journey to the country and the Afghanistan Football Federation (AFF) had to find out how and why the club came over to Australia. After a number of months of trying, a match was arranged at a local football park in the suburbs. However, the Peshawar Club had an issue when it came to securing transport for the first game of the trip, which occurred on June 6.
The team consisted of 16 players with a maximum of three overage to ensure they did not get injured at practice.
Photo: The Afghanistan Football Federation
The match was played in front of an empty stadium. After the match, a member from Peshawar FC came with a player to meet with me. I met the player and she told me what happened and what was going on. This is what she had to say,
“I was on my way from Peshawar to a match in my club in Sharabagh and then I got stopped at the checkpoint. We had only enough fuel for three trucks and there were two police officers at the checkpoint. The Peshawar FC and I offered to take the others. When we were taking the other team to the stadium and I was taking the third truck, the officer on the checkpoint shouted, ‘You guys better bring more fuel’. The team had no choice but to return to Peshawar empty handed.”
“Since then, for every game that happened we had some problems with the police. Some of them would stop the truck and harass us. Finally, they did stop the truck when we were taking the team to the stadium in Hazarai. The manager of the club is a good friend of mine and he helped us get in. The