Personality profile
Sports fan Tracey Crouch on soccer, sexism and Olympic sparkle by Diane Nicholls
WITH a love of sport nurtured during her Kentish childhood, Tracey Crouch dreamed as she grew up of becoming the country’s first professional female football star. As Conservative MP for Chatham and Aylesford, she has achieved a very different goal, but is still just as passionate about “the beautiful game” and the increasing part that women are playing in it. An FA
qualified coach and girls soccer team
manager, she is one lady who would not need a Sky TV pundit to explain the off-side rule to her. She also confesses to being a Spurs fan – but hey, nobody’s perfect.
Bottom left: A constituency event with local councillors Born in 1975 in Ashford as the daughter of a social
worker and insurance broker, she says she was not a very sporty child at first but just loved playing outside. “There was only me and my sister and the rest of
the estate was basically boys. So if we didn’t play football and the boys’ sports, we didn’t play outside. From eight years’ old I became absorbed in all sorts of sport – football, cricket, American football – you name it.” Starting at Folkestone Girls’ Grammar School at the age of 11, Tracey had little chance to play football as the sporting emphasis was on netball and hockey. It wasn’t until she got to Hull University, where
she studied law, that she got to play competitive football. As a striker, she represented the university and
after graduating and moving to London, played for a team in the London League. Having scored a “decent number of goals” over the years, she is still proud of the number of keepie-uppies she can do. She became a Spurs fan at the age of eight and was so inspired by prolific goal scorer Clive Allen
4 Mid Kent Living
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