She is an icon of the sport of football, one of its most successful players and a globally recognised star.
So how did former USWNT midfielder Megan Rapinoe end up being pictured with the shirt of the Dulwich Hamlet women’s team, a club in south-east London just promoted to the fourth tier of the English game?
The answer involves good contacts, excellent logistics and what one of the Dulwich players describes as the club’s “lightning in a bottle” potential.
If it was intended as a morale boost when the photo of World Cup winner and Olympic gold-medallist Rapinoe appeared on the club’s social media three days before the biggest fixture of their season, it worked.
Your club could never 😉 #DHFC 💖💙 #Spicy 🌶️ pic.twitter.com/xSyZqa8H04
— Dulwich Hamlet FC W (@DHFC_W) May 16, 2024
Dulwich beat Saltdean Women FC 5-1 on Sunday to be crowned champions and win promotion to the FA Women’s National League (Division 1, South East), sparking celebrations back at their home ground, which they share with the men’s team, at Champion Hill.
Getting the picture was not as straightforward as the team’s win, though.
“One of our players got a message from her friend who was watching (WNBA star) Caitlin Clark’s last game in Iowa and she was sat by Megan Rapinoe,” explains Dulwich winger Lucy Monkman. “They had got talking about football and Dulwich came up. Then Meg said she really liked our shirt.”
Dulwich Hamlet (Lucy Monkman)
That admission sparked a frantic scramble to get a shirt from London to New York, via Manchester where another friend had Rapinoe’s name and number printed on the back, in time for it to be presented to Rapinoe at a pre-arranged drop-off a few days later.
“We’ve definitely had a lot of interest in the picture,” says Monkman, also known as DJ and producer Monki.
“We’ve got a special thing going on at the club,” Monkman continued. “There were 1,200 fans at our last home game — that’s more than a lot of WSL clubs. We have the lightning in the bottle and we’re figuring out how to use it best.”
The Dulwich Hamlet women’s team launched four years ago after a merger with AFC Phoenix, based in nearby Clapham.
“When we started with Phoenix we were playing at Clapham Common in front of two people and a dog,” says Monkman. “Now people like Megan Rapinoe pose with our shirt and our players are coming off at the end of games signing autographs for fans.
“I’m very proud of where we’ve come from and where we are now.”
Monkman was speaking after a busy couple of days celebrating their triumph, which included the team getting matching tattoos of the word ‘Hills’ (from a supporter song listing the various hills in East Dulwich) inked onto each of them.
The photograph of their celebrity fan is not the first time Rapinoe has endorsed the club. In 2020, she was pictured signing autographs for fans — after the United States Women’s team won the CONCACAF Olympic qualifying tournament — with a Dulwich Hamlet scarf draped around her neck.
That time, superfan Gen Williams presented the scarf to the former Ballon d’Or and winner of the FIFA Best Player award because she felt Rapinoe would appreciate their mutual support for LGBTQ+ issues.
(Top photo from @DHFC_W)
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