Fiona McAnena last week on fairness in women’s sport:

The Football Association does not allow mixed football for adults. That is what it will tell you. But this month a 17-year-old girl was suspended for questioning the presence of a bearded man in the opposing team. That was an offence under the FA’s code of conduct because that man says he is a woman.

So which is it? You might think the FA should pick one and only one, but wait, there’s an escape clause. The bearded man is not a man, because he says he’s not. Bam, problem solved.

Since 2013, the FA has allowed male players who identify as transgender into women’s teams if they can show they have lowered their testosterone. 

To point out the obvious, that’s a very bizarre and unfair “if”. Lowering one’s testosterone does not reverse all the physical advantages that have accrued since puberty started. The skeleton doesn’t shrink.

Three years ago the UK’s Sports Councils published transgender inclusion guidance that pointed out that male puberty is not reversible, that testosterone suppression does not change that, and that allowing male players into women’s teams is neither fair nor safe in a contact sport. Since then the biggest participation sports – athletics, swimming, cycling – have changed their rules to protect the female category, as have many others. But not football, the biggest team sport in the country.

The biggest and also, surely, one of the most contact-prone. There’s a lot of accidental or non-accidental crashing and bumping in football, and women aren’t going to want to get bumped by a man. My guess is that the presence of a man on the other team would be generally inhibiting for the opposing team, which all by itself – even if no crashing ever happened – is a more than adequate reason to say NO to men in women’s football.

Oh look, it’s not just a guess.

A year ago, Telegraph Sport reported on a row that was tearing apart the Sheffield and Hallamshire women’s football league. One player, an adult male, was causing havoc. The male ability to shoulder women off the ball, combined with running speed, “made a mockery of the game”, one player told me. Other teams withdrew, fearing injury. Privately, one of his team-mates expressed her worry, saying she tried to be on the same side in training so as to avoid his tackles. But she did not dare say so publicly.

What I’m saying. It hobbles the opposing women even before the damn match starts.

This is a recurring theme. A player at the club who reported the 17-year-old told me that she knows it is not right. She claims that a player was tackled so hard by a transgender player that she ended up concussed, and a defender had her shoulder broken trying to block a shot from a transgender player. But she says “there’s a culture of fear around discussing this, which means nobody can complain, including opposition players and managers, because when they try to bring it up, the local FA has always shut it down”.

So injury to women and destruction of their sport doesn’t matter, but confirmation of men’s claims to be women does matter.

Why is that exactly? In all these years I’ve never seen a convincing explanation.

The Sheffield incident prompted more than 70 MPs and peers to sign a letter to the FA expressing their concern about its policy, and the risk of harm to female players. Earlier this year, in response, senior FA officials met a small group of MPs at Westminster. I was at that meeting, and heard the FA justify its approach on the basis that 72 is a small number in the context of the 2.6 million who play football. 

72 men bashing women is a small number compared to 2.6 million. Well that’s fine then.