The first ever Great Britain Deaf Women's Football trials were based in Doncaster and over 50 women from all over the UK attended. The first ever Great Britain Deaf Women's Football team was selected from these trials – a historic moment.

Initially, it was very difficult to organise international matches, as there were very few Deaf women 11 a side teams worldwide. However, we had lots of friendly matches and training weekends, so the squad continued to develop. A GB squad was selected to go to the European Futsal championships (5 a side) in 2002 in Bulgaria. We came 6th out of 8 teams,disappointing, but as it was our first international tournament, we were very pleased with how we performed.

Since then, we have come a long way, having played lots of friendly games and competed in tournaments such as the Scandinavian Deaf Cup in Oslo, Norway, in September 2003. It was vital that we did well in this tournament so we could go to the Melbourne Deaflympics in January 2005. We duly won this tournament, having beat Norway, Denmark and Sweden. We were also involved in the Umbro Tournament (hearing) in Manchester in July 2004, and we did brilliantly, however, we were gutted to get to the finals and lose on penalties!

This was an excellent preparation for the January 2005 Deaflympics in Melbourne, Australia for the very first women's football competition in Deaflympics history. We competed against the USA, Australia, Norway, Russia and Denmark with an exhausting schedule of 7 matches in 12 days. Although we were disappointed to lose to Russia in the semi finals on penalties, we picked the bronze medal in the 3/4th play offs with Denmark, winning 2-1 after extra time. Great Britain Deaf Women's Football will go down in history is the first winners of a bronze medal in women's football at the Deaflympics. We are determined to do better and win gold at the Taiwan Deaflympics in 2009!

After the Deaflympics, there have been changes in personnel and we now have a new Great Britain Deaf Women Football committee, George McGowan being our Head Coach. We currently have training weekends organised for July and October 2007, so be sure to keep checking the website for details. We have a friendly match scheduled for August 2007 against Hassocks in Brighton. We will also be organising a programme of training weekends and friendly matches throughout 2008 in preparation for the 2009 Deaflympics in Taiwan.