An Australian “trans inclusive” Premier League women’s football team with multiple male players has scored another win yesterday against a women’s team. The Flying Bats Football Club will now progress into the women’s championships after defeating the Leichhardt Saints, 3-2.
The Flying Bats FC, which has at least five confirmed male participants, emerged victorious yesterday during Round 2 of the Premier League Football New South Wales (FNSW) Champion of Champions knockout competition. The Saints, an all-female team, has now lost the opportunity to compete in the finals, leaving the Bats one step closer to winning the women’s title. According to the FNSW website, the Champion of Champions tournament is one of the most prestigious tournaments in the footballing calendar, with champions from each association pitted against each other in a “battle for supremacy.”
During the game yesterday, one of the trans-identified males on the Flying Bats team received one red card and two yellow cards – indicating serious in-game infractions for which he was ultimately pulled from the match completely.
Prior to the competition, the Leichhardt Saints women’s team had previously been undefeated all season. But the Flying Bats had a similar track record, winning all 17 games last season and scoring 76 goals while only a total of 8 points were scored against them. The Flying Bats have attributed their success to an “investment in a dedicated coaching position” rather than to the physical advantages their male players have over the female football players they compete against.
The Flying Bats is next scheduled to play against the Colo Soccer Football Club on September 29. The finals will be held closer to the end of October.
Earlier this year the team was awarded a $1,000 prize after winning the North West Sydney League pre-season Beryl Ackroyd Cup, following a season of winning every game they played in the Women’s Premier League matches, 10-0. The news generated significant outcry and resulted in The Flying Bats making international headlines.
Last month, Reduxx reported that The Flying Bats, a football club for “self-identified women and non-binary people,” had won the Grand Final 5-4 over West Pennant Hills Cherrybrook Football Club. Due to the significant criticism the football club has attracted over the past year, security guards were present at the game and conducted bag checks, requiring all who attended to ditch their recording devices.
However, nearly 200 photos of yesterday’s match were published online, and Reduxx can now definitively name the five male players in the Flying Bats Women’s Football Club as Raili Haagensen, Josephine Massingham, Mattie Noble, Lian Sinclair, and Riley Dennis.
Dennis, born Justin and formerly a trans activist YouTuber, was previously identified by Reduxx as a player for the Flying Bats Women’s Premier League. Before transferring to the Flying Bats FC, Dennis was previously accused of severely injuring women while participating in matches for the New South Wales Inter Lions.
On May 21, 2023, during a game between the Inter Lions and the St. George football clubs at the Majors Bay Reserve, Dennis launched his smaller female opponent towards a metal fence using an aggressive tackle as the two chased down the ball.
Reduxx was provided footage of the match, which showed the female player laying on her side, unmoving, as the transgender player casually walked away. The month prior, Dennis was said to have injured another female player, who reportedly had to seek hospital attention as a result of her injury.
An anonymous source close to the situation explained to Reduxx that Dennis left the Inter Lions team following last year’s controversy. The source stated that Dennis then submitted at least three applications of interest for other teams, which were not accepted. The Flying Bats, however, approved his application to join the team. The football club’s official website states it is “the biggest LGBTQIA+ women’s and non-binary football club in the world,” having been founded in 1985.
The source told Reduxx that all of the known men competing for the Flying Bats FC in the Premier League are approximately 6 feet tall or slightly over, with Dennis standing at about 6’4″.
Another trans-identified male competing against women for the Flying Bats FC in the AA1 league is Lian Sinclair, a postdoctoral research associate in “critical mineral global production” at the University of Sydney.
In 2015, an academic queer theory paper authored by Sinclair titled “Magical Genders: The Gender(s) of Witches in the historical Imagination of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld” was published in the journal Mythlore. In the article, Sinclair discusses the “gendered history of witches and wizards in the consensus fantasy universe to explicitly challenge the error of gendered truth.”
On social media, Sinclair mocks women critical of gender ideology as “TERFs”, a pejorative acronym which stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist” and is often used in the context of threatening violence or abusive harassment. In March of last year, following a widely-publicized women’s rights demonstration in Melbourne which was unexpectedly attended by neo-Nazis, Sinclair posted to social media his thoughts on “TERF flirtations with Nazis.”
The Flying Bats FC has come under fire internally in the recent past, with other football clubs and coaches expressing concerns over the strength and size of the males competing in the club.
In March, the President of the St. Patrick’s FC, Frank Parisi, brought his concerns to the Northwest Sydney Football Association (NWSFA). In leaked audio of the meeting, Parisi could be heard informing the Association that he had lost more than 20 female players because they had refused to compete against the Flying Bats. Parisi also revealed that one of his female players had her leg broken by a trans-identified male associated with the Flying Bats, and that she had been penalized for “transphobia” following her injury.
During the meeting, which was attended by the CEO of Football NSW John Tsatsimas and convened by CEO of NWSF, Matthew Geracitano, attendees were also told that a decision to boycott participation by forfeiting matches against The Flying Bats would result in “disciplinary action” being issued.
According to regulations put forward by the NWSFA, “players may register and participate on the basis of their gender identification.” There are thought to be a total of at least nine trans-identified males playing football within the women’s leagues, though their identities have been protected and withheld by Australian media.
Last year, after releasing an article revealing Riley Dennis as the transgender football player accused of injuring female players at a women’s game, Reduxx was contacted by the eSafety Commissioner of Australia and advised to censor or delete the article.
The eSafety Commissioner then targeted social media users who had shared information from the Reduxx article on Dennis. One platform targeted, Ovarit, was encouraged to either delete the comments “misgendering” Dennis, or suspend the users responsible.
EDIT 9/23/24: A previous version of the article incorrectly failed to specify the match was a qualifier for the final championship, not the championship game itself.
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