July 21 – England captain Millie Bright has been passed fit for her country’s opening game of the women’s World Cup and will wear armbands to raise awareness for a range of social causes.
When England meet Haiti on Saturday, Bright, who had been an injury doubt, will wear the ‘Unite for Inclusion’ armband.
She will switch to ‘Unite for Indigenous People’ for the second match against Denmark. In the final group game against China, she will wear the one stating ‘Unite for Gender Equality’.
“As a group, we felt really strongly about all the causes, and we couldn’t separate one from the other,” Bright said, adding that the team will support new causes if they advance to the knockout round.
Like at the men’s World Cup in Qatar, teams are banned from wearing the ‘OneLove’ rainbow armband in support of LGBTQ+ rights.
Instead, players are able to choose from eight alternative armbands and the Lionesses intend to wear a new one for each game.
“We’ve only just come to a decision recently, as we wanted to take time to process it all and to make sure we spoke collectively,” said Bright.
“As a team, we know what we stand for, what we believe in and we also know the changes that we want to make. So regardless of an armband, we would like to think our actions and our morals represent everything that we believe in and stand for.”
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