A Euros Summer With The Victoria Park Vixens
We joined east London’s buzziest grassroots team for a kickabout - and talked community, kits, and the Euros.
It started with an Instagram story. Mog Brennan had just moved from Australia to London and was looking for her people - a tribe, a sense of belonging, a reason to hang out in Victoria Park in Hackney that wasn’t just for the overpriced flat whites. “I hadn’t quite found my community or team yet, so I decided to try set up my own,” she tells us. “It started as five people in the park… now we have around 40 people in total across multiple teams.”
Victoria Park Vixens is a grassroots women's football collective that’s as much about belonging as it is about banging in goals. In a city that can sometimes feel like a transient, fickle place to its inhabitants – Vixens has been a constant for the players. There are various grassroots teams for women in the capital today, but when Vixens started, this kind of thing wasn’t easy to come across. Six years later, these pioneers are still going strong - playing league matches, international tournaments, dissecting tactics on WhatsApp in as much detail as Ian Wright, and gathering for boozy pub debriefs.
It’s a multicultural squad with global roots and shared values - “Most definitely…a very international community bound through our love of the game,” says regular player Joanna Burr. And despite the image you might have of Vixens from their finessed Instagram presence - a haven for London’s elite creatives - everyone’s welcome. “One funny part of our football community is that no one really knows what each other do outside of Vixens,” Burr tells us. The Vixens remind us why football matters. The feeling of togetherness, of course. Of belonging. But also another fundamental element of the game. “You’ll never see us turn on each other but we are definitely competitive and in it to win,” says Burr. “It’s the absolute best feeling when the ball finds the back of the net, more often than not by Faye, currently defending her title for Golden Boot.”
This summer, with the Women’s Euros in full swing in Switzerland, we’re pleased to celebrate football from the grassroots up. That’s why we invited the Vixens to try out some choice pieces from our latest collection, which is a celebration of football’s communal joy and its creativity. As for their Euros tips? Norway’s knitwear kits. Spain, Sweden, and France to cause chaos. And they’re backing the Lionesses to bring it home, obvs. You can catch the Vixens in action most weeks - or at one of INDIVISA’s Euros watch parties at Hoxton Docks. Just don’t ask about their day jobs.
