What We Do

The Offside Rule is an all-female-fronted football podcast and website with an active and engaging social media presence.

Lynsey Hooper, Kait Borsay and Hayley McQueen head up the podcast, with a 30-strong team of volunteers behind-the-scenes creating and curating content to actively promote female inclusion in all elements of football.

Born out of frustration at the lack of representation of women in the industry, The Offside Rule has been going since 2012 with the aim of creating one space for football, regardless of gender.

We officially launched for the 2012/13 season, producing weekly roundtable-format podcasts, discussing the week’s football stories and giving behind-the-scenes insight.

Our first female volunteers started either straight from finishing their university degrees or helping alongside their studies, managing our social media channels. Our identity was quickly established – a space where football fans can converse and debate football.

In 2013 we launched a website (and here you are!) to provide a new platform for the podcast and also to broaden out into written content. Now, it has become a destination for fan pieces – written by men and women – and a home for industry firsts in coverage of the women’s game.

We were one of the few to cover the whole of the Women’s World Cup from Canada in 2015 and we also produced a pre-tournament preview magazine, working with many of the female footballers we have built relationships with over the years.

We released the first-ever Women’s Top 100 list in 2016 and have committed to making this an annual release. In 2018, the list was created in collaboration with the Guardian who allocated pages in print and published the list on their website.

We utilised the knowledge and expertise of 72 judges from around the world, including Kelly Smith, Kathryn Markgraf, Joe Montemurro, Olivier Echouafni, Mark Parsons and Annike Krahn.

In 2017/18, we launched The Offside Rule Exclusives – again an all-female-led venture, this time a monthly podcast featuring an in-depth interview with big names in football, so far including Jermain Defoe, Joe Hart and Casey Stoney.

In fall 2019, we launched The Offside Rule: WSL Edition to focus on Barclay’s FA Women’s Super League as well as internationals. Throw in a rotating panel of women’s football insiders and we’ve created yet another unique entry for our multiple award-winning podcast roster.

Our projects are not limited to producing a podcast, nor solely focussed on the women’s game, though we love it! We have also broadcast live from Wembley Stadium, provided support for grassroots football and traveled far and wide to cover World Cups and European Championships, demonstrating true parity with knowledge and depth of coverage across our channels.

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