The Deptford Ravens

Join Us: Become a Raven

A picture of a player wearing a paper mache raven head.

How do I become a member?

If you are interested in becoming a Raven, you can ‘try out’ a session before becoming a member. Please contact us via email or on Instagram to join and read our Equality Policy before attending. Our friendly 'Nest Friends' will welcome you upon arrival. This 'try out' has nothing to do with your athletic ability! We welcome members of all abilities, it's just to make sure you like us and enjoy how we play.

If you've enjoyed your 'try out' session you can become a member by completing our membership form. To access the form, just ask the person who arranged your 'try out' session for the link. Membership is free. You will then be invited to join ‘Spond’, the app we use to manage our sessions, leagues, and socials.

Sometimes we pause membership and use a waiting list, particularly in Winter when more Ravens like to play. However, if you are a member of the Global Majority you can still sign up. This is because we are an anti-racist group and are seeking ways to redress the imbalance of representation and diversity within grassroots women's football.

Equality Policy

Training

In the summer we play in Fordham Park every Weds from 6.15 - 8.30pm.

Three sessions a month we have coaches. These sessions are donations-based to help pay our coaches the London Living Wage. We recommend £4 for basic rate, or £8 for solidarity. We have a card reader on the day.

One session a month is coach-less, here we simply have a kick-about in the park. No donations required.

Members join these sessions by clicking attend on the Spond App each week. There are 28 space which generally don't fill up in the Summer, but do in the Winter. Global Majority Members have 5 additional spaces which they can take if space is full.

A picture of ravens posing in front of a goal with the Raven banner.

An illustration of ravens at a league game.

Leagues

We participate in three beginner-friendly leagues. Clubs United on Saturday Morning, and Goal Posts on Sunday midday and Thursday evening.

Each league is roughly £6 a game, and because there are so many Ravens you typically get around 3 games a league. Members who cannot afford the leagues will be funded.

What are you doing to make the space inclusive?

Making sure our space is inclusive is incredibly important to us. We are continually working on this to improve. Some of the initiatives we have in place, are listed below:

We have 5 spaces saved for Global Majority (GM) community members when training sessions have reached max capacity each week.
GM community members can join the Deptford Ravens when waiting lists are closed due to capacity challenges over winter.
We remind Ravens at the start of each training session to use gender neutral language, to be kind to one another, understand all abilities, and that our motto is fun over competition!
We have Nest Friends to support Ravens at training (see section below).
The committee has done training on conflict de-escalation and first aid.
We offer Ravens the opportunity to put their pronouns on their kit, but we understand if our trans* and nonbinary players don't feel safe to do so.
We have many players who identify as LGBTQ+ and so we hope you will feel safe in this space.
We have lots of players who are open about being neurodiverse, so we hope that if you are neurodiverse you will feel safe in this space.
We hope that players of all age and ability will join, and currently have players ranging from early 20s to over 40s.
We have a few mums on the team, and we encourage further mums to play, we will be handing out recruitment flyers to mums of the children who play next to us in the park.
We have been attending Palestine demos and anti-raid protests; as well as highlighting concerns and issues of the GM community.
We have an anti-racist committee working to make our space more inclusive for the Global Majority as our main priority for now, but we will be working on other important areas such as making our space inclusive of people with disabilities in the near future.