Mariana Alex started playing football at six years old, when her father introduced her to the game.
"Now it is a part of my life," she said.
Mariana is the daughter of Peter Alex, a video journalist who started a football coaching club for girls in the state of Assam, in India.
She's now 14, and the football club has been up and running for the better part of a decade.
"I was the first student in the club; now we have so many," Mariana said.
A soccer club may seem pretty ordinary, but women's football in India isn't big, and how it all started has made its creator a local celebrity.
Peter's goal was to teach football within his local area and attract young people to the game.
"I wanted to see kids, especially girls, take up football to experience this beautiful game," he said.
Peter initially just kept taking his daughter to the park to play football, in the hope others would join.
It attracted the attention of some locals, and now there are about 20 girls in the Rainbow Football Club.
He said he named it this to incorporate people of all abilities and backgrounds.
"I named it Rainbow because our region has various people of caste and creed and tribes, just like the rainbow," he said.
Cultural barriers
Running a football club isn't easy, especially if you've never done it before and don't have funding.
Peter has lived in India all this life, and started playing football at seven years old, but never professionally.
"I didn't have much opportunity during childhood, so was kept confined to amateur football," he said.
But his love of the game and opportunities he wanted for his daughter, spurred him on.
At the start, Peter invested his own salary into the club, and found a public space to play.
"Thankfully I had a playground which I turned into a football ground. That was the only infrastructure available," he said.
Those who can afford to contribute now pay a fee of between three and nine Australian dollars each per month.
But it's not enough to cover essentials like goal posts and balls, and Peter is still putting his hand in his pocket.
The other big challenge is getting girls to play.
"It's hard to convince parents to put their daughters into football," Peter said.
One parent said they wanted their daughter to take up the game, but they felt pressure from other people around them, who feel like sport isn't something girls should play.
Another parent was concerned about the uniform.
"People laugh at us when they see our daughter in shorts" they said.
Then there's the feeling that if girls are out playing sport, they're not spending as much time as they should on their schoolwork.
These are all things Peter tries to stay positive about.
"It is difficult to keep things in a smooth flow," he said.
"You never know when you will suddenly stop seeing a girl or have someone drop out of practice."
Despite the cultural barriers, Peter is pushing on.
"If my daughter can play football and continue with her studies your daughter can balance it too," he said.
India's plan to make way for women
The All India Football Federation (AIFF) has recognised more needs to be done to grow women's football in the country.
It recently announced it would set a minimum wage for players in the Indian Women's League (IWL), which is the country's top-flight competition for women's football.
The top eight participating teams would need to have at least 10 Indian players on an annual contract, worth a minimum of about $AU6,000 each.
According to AIFF Secretary Shaji Prabhakaran, this initiative would help attract more girls into the game.
"We have come up with this policy to impact the growth of women's football," Prabharakan said.
"As when women players start to earn decent money from football then many more girls will start to play football and many parents will also support their girl child in football.
"This one decision along with our plan to have a proper women's league structure from next season will certainly help in making women's football grow faster than one imagined, and we can anticipate a significant growth of women's football at all levels."
Making inroads
The AIFF also has a long-term development initiative for girls and boys in India, called the Golden Baby Leagues.
Clubs submit teams in a competition where kids aged from six years old can play games, learn and develop.
The first Baby League in Assam was in 2018, and Rainbow Football Club had girl players in the under 10s, 12s and 13s.
Peter said no other clubs had any girls, among the 400 players taking part.
Along with this league Peter arranges football matches among his students and boys' teams in the local area, and the girls play in other boys' tournaments.
Buoyed by these initiatives, and his love of the game, Peter dreams of a day when one of his trainees takes the field as a professional player.
"I want to set an example for other girls in the local area," he said.
"To take up this beautiful game and excel."
Prarthana Hazarika is a Senior Sports Journalist at India's public broadcaster, Prasar Bharati, a member of the International Sports Press Association and part of ABC International Development’s Women in News and Sport Initiative, funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade through the Team Up program.
