I agree it is ridculious, i mean the ministers want more girls involved in football yet this sort of thing is still happening, good on your cousin though getting on at the Liverpool centre of excellence.
Here's another article from the times
GIRLS with the talent of the Bend It Like Beckham stars should be allowed to continue playing competitive football with boys rather than being segregated into single sex teams at the age of 11, say MPs.
A Commons committee is expected this week to tell the Football Association (FA) that it should drop its “outdated” ban which means hundreds of girls have to quit the mixed game and play in girls’ only sides when they turn 12.
The Commons culture select committee is likely to say the ban may be hampering the development of the most promising young girls who would benefit from playing in mixed teams beyond the age of 11.
It is understood the ban is also opposed by Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary.
The FA retains the regulation because it believes that girls, once they turn 12, could be physically overpowered by boys. However, grassroots teams complain that they are losing girls who, in some cases, are better footballers than the boys and would benefit from mixed football in their teenage years.
MPs say it is also damaging the women’s game because it means talented girls who could go on to compete on the international stage cannot fulfil their potential.
In some countries such as America and Germany girls can carry on playing alongside boys until their teenage years, and parents and coaches decide when they should stop. These countries field some of the strongest teams in the international women’s game.
The Commons committee is expected to call for the age bar, which applies to all school and club sides, to be raised or possibly scrapped.
Earlier this year Minnie Cruttwell and Hannah Dale, both 10, wrote to Jowell urging her to intervene over the matter. Jowell said she was concerned that Britain was “the only country in Europe that has a blanket ban in place for mixed football at this age”.
Cruttwell, of Balham, south London, will have to leave her club side, the Balham Blazers, at the end of the coming season if the guidelines are not changed. “I know I am as good as every boy I have played against and every boy on my team,” she said. “I would like to stay and have a choice until an age where it has got out of hand and the boys are absolutely huge — but that’s not going to happen very soon.”
BEC United, another south London club, will lose three of its star players — all girls — at the start of the new season when they turn 12.
Pat Kelly, the coach, said he would like to keep them in a mixed side until 15 or 16 when physiological differences between the sexes were pronounced.
“In Germany and America, girls play with boys to a much older age and these are the players who later go on to win the women’s World Cup because they are physically stronger,” he said.
Partly helped by the success of the film Bend It Like Beckham, women’s football is now the fastest growing team sport in the country despite attracting only a fraction of the funding of the men’s game.
The FA said it was consulting youngsters and will report in the autumn.