Women in one of the top football leagues in Sydney, Australia, have been banned from protesting against a “trans-inclusive” team that has been known to have up to 5 male players. The women of the Northern Suburbs Football Association were reportedly forced to sign an agreement that explicitly barred them from forfeiting matches against the Flying Bats LGBTQIA+ football club.
The Flying Bats describe themselves on their website as “the biggest LGBTQIA+ women’s and non-binary football club in the world.” Originally founded in 1985 as a football club for lesbians, they now welcome “everybody from across the rainbow family… [and] especially encourage trans and gender-diverse folks to join us, with research showing that access to safe community sport can help improve the mental and physical well-being of minority and oppressed groups.”
In March 2024, Reduxx reported that five male players, who identified as transgender or non-binary, joined the team for the winter 2024 Premier League of the North West Sydney Football Association (NWSFA) that was to take place over the coming months.
The team dominated the pre-season Beryl Ackroyd Cup, netting a $1,000 prize. With the news that the men had joined, racking up victory after victory, 24 women dropped out of playing in the league in protest. The decision was influenced by reports that the men had repeatedly injured some of the female players to the point of no longer being able to play football.
Unsurprisingly, by August, the Flying Bats had won the NWSFA Premier League, having gone the season completely undefeated. They hadn’t lost a single game among the 17 they had played, although six of those were because the opposition had forfeited the game in silent protest.
While they scored 76 goals against their opponents, there were only 8 goals scored against them. During the final, cameras were even banned by security “because the Flying Bats [were] a hot topic in football circles.” In the 2025 season, they dominated again, becoming women’s league champions two years in a row.
December 2025 saw the creation of a new league system for women in Sydney. The NWSFA announced they were joining forces with the Northern Suburbs Football Association (NSFA), to create two new top leagues. The new highest league between the two associations would be the Women’s Super League, while the second league would be the Women’s Premier League. This has seemingly replaced the top leagues in the women’s division of both associations. In a press release at the time, the associations said that the leagues would be made up of 14 teams total, taken from both associations.
The NSFA appears to have responsibility for the Super League, with the NWSFA administering the Premier League, with the online results for each only being accessible under their respective Dribl.com results websites.
On Wednesday, it was revealed by a whistleblower who contacted Ben Fordham of 2GB radio in Sydney, that the NSFA has made all players in the Super League sign a disturbing agreement.
“The agreements state that teams will not forfeit playing the Flying Bats, who have the male-born players. This does not sit well with me,” they said in a statement read out on the station. The whistleblower noted that the NSFA has a newly appointed president, and fears repercussions if they had revealed their identity to the public with the information.
Fordham noted that they had repeatedly tried to contact Football New South Wales, the overall governing body of football in the region, but that they were “washing their hands of it,” while the NSFA themselves had completely ignored any attempt of contact.
Ironically, as Fordham noted, the associations have open competitions, where men and women compete together, that the trans-identified males could have joined there if they wanted to play against women without any issue.
So far, according to the results of the Super League, the Flying Bats’ top team is actually doing terribly against their competition. In the first round, they drew 1-1 against North Sydney United, but were then roundly defeated by Lindfield FC in an 8-1 match. NSU’s A Team then hammered the Flying Bats in the third round to take them out 3-1, resulting in the LGBT team sitting at the bottom of the table at the time of writing due to goal difference.
In the Premier League, however, the Flying Bats are placed 4th out of a total of 13 teams, only losing one out of the four matches they’ve played this season. It is unclear whether the ban on protest has also applied to the Premier League, or whether this is something only for the top flight or for the teams being governed by the NSFA as opposed to the NWSFA.
Of the male players confirmed to have played on the Flying Bats team is American trans-identified YouTuber Justin “Riley” Dennis.
In 2023, Dennis played for the Inter Lions, another New South Wales football team, before joining the Flying Bats in 2024. During a 2023 game between the Inter Lions and the St. George football clubs at the Majors Bay Reserve, Dennis tackled a female opponent, launching her towards a metal fence. Footage obtained by Reduxx shows the woman lying on her side, unmoving, as Dennis walks away casually.
Dennis is one of two trans-identified male football players who has been engaged in a lawsuit against women’s rights advocate Kirralie Smith. In December, Smith was found guilty by a New South Wales court of “unlawfully vilifying” Dennis for referring to him with male pronouns and raising public awareness of his inclusion in women’s sports after learning of injuries sustained by female players.
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