“Nah, that’s not what I mean,” said Liam, defensive. “Just, has anyone ever said she by accident, you know what I mean?”

“Loads of people. People on the bus. People in shops. My mum, all the time. It’s annoying, but if they’re not doing it on purpose, what can you do?”

Go home and stare at myself in the mirror for like an hour and try to figure out what gave me away, usually, but I didn’t tell them that.

“Do you not get raging about it?” asked Liam.

“No,” I said.

I lied.

“I don’t know why anyone would call you she,” said Alistair over the top of his body-spray bottle. It was the first time I’d ever heard him say something that wasn’t a comeback or a joke, and it was like his whole face changed. “You don’t look like a she. You don’t seem like a she.”

Gregor had been staring for a while. We’d never really spoken off the pitch.

“I’ve never met a trans guy before,” he said.

“That you know of,” I said.

“That I know of, yeah,” he said. “Anyway. Nice to meet you.”

He put his hand out to shake mine, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. All the guys slagged him for being like an old man, and that was more or less the end of that.

Since that first social, it’s actually been pretty good. The guys have always treated me like one of the lads, and it’s good to feel part of the team.

*

We’re on our way to East Kilbride, of all places.

Somehow Helen managed to get us into the West of Scotland Youth League, a league for under-18s, even though some of the guys on our team are nineteen, and Alistair’s just about to turn twenty.

“They haven’t really asked your ages,” said Helen, when she told us about the league. “So we just won’t say anything, right?”

I have to admit, I’m nervous about playing against a mainstream team.

And when I say mainstream, I mean straight.

We’ve played a couple of friendly matches against some of the other inclusive teams, teams that are made up of LGBTQ+ players and allies, and we even played in a mini league against some other ‘diversity squads’, mixed gender teams, a team of refugees and asylum seekers, that sort of thing. I felt kind of bad playing against a team for guys with learning disabilities, guys with Down’s syndrome and stuff, but they kicked our arses.

They were pretty good.

And, for the record, we’re totally shit.

It’s fun, though.

When we played our first match in the league we got a bit of bother online, weird messages on Twitter from people with cartoons and Union Jacks instead of profile pictures.

‘poofter fc’ was one of the cleverest, and it’s a pretty good gauge of the kind of wit that was on display.

Some of the messages were gross, though.

I don’t really want to go into it.