In the inaugural Women's Football awards ceremony, Manchester Laces, the city's biggest inclusive football club won the Spector, Constant & Williams Grassroots Initiative of the Year award for its inspiring dedication towards diversity and inclusivity at grassroots level.
Manchester Laces were there to accept the award and said: "It's absolutely amazing like this is such a major award ceremony and to be winning something. We are a grassroots club at the end of the day so it's just amazing to be even in this space let alone to be acknowledged.
"There's loads of spaces out there, they're doing incredible work. So when anybody else wins in this space, it feels like all of us winning anyway."
"I know that sounds really cliched, but genuinely, inclusive spaces in women's football, we just want to see more of them. Because then there's more people accessing football, more people accessing a community, more people feeling like they can play football, which I don't think was the case maybe five or ten years ago, whereas now I feel like there's so many more spaces now so when other people there feeling like 'we've lost'. I feel like we've all won.
"We have so many women non-binary people who say like, I wasn't really allowed to play football and they've not played football in decades and they come to us and say, I've always wanted to, but there's not been that space.
"We're a football team with an 18-year-old and a 60-year-old, [who] get along, which is amazing."
Part of the huge movement towards the growth of the inclusive space, Manchester Laces kit and efforts have been immortalised and put on show among the greatest moments of the English game's history in the Manchester Football Museum women's football display.
Laces beat top competition to win their category: TGI Fridays – #CelebrateTheGame campaign, Agility Life Sciences – GIFT Grants, West Ham United's Player Development Pathway, Tottenham Hotspur's Female Talent Pathway, Everton's Grassroots Commitment, Sunderland Association Football Club's 'For Our Girls' campaign, Miss Kick Foundation's Team Up To Level Up, Inspire Girls Football's IGF College Programme and Weymouth Women's Grassroots Commitment.
