In this week’s Open Access spotlight, we speak to Alice Livingstone Boomla. Known as “Dr Alice” to her fans, Alice is a stalwart of the weekly OA Saturday training sessions and a proud member of the Cageys and the WNBD 11s team.

Prepare to feel you could and should be doing more… Alice is a Mum to two children, has a PHD in Number Theory and is Leader of A Level Maths at a school. She’s also a dedicated volunteer at CCFC, bringing her skills on the abacus to serve as the finance officer for the OA and WNBD 11s programme…

What is your OA origin story?

I first came to OA in summer 2022, my daughter had just started playing football at primary school and I was a bit jealous! I hadn’t played football properly since primary school, when I used to play every lunch with the boys. At secondary school only the boys did football in PE and so I stopped playing. I also wanted to get fit and carve out a bit of “me time”. I had been to watch CCFC a few times before but found about OA via a Google search.

What do you think makes OA so special?

OA was a really welcoming place right from the first week that I went. Julie and Ellie are a great (sometimes comedy!) duo, but are also great coaches, who successfully manage to run sessions that teach complete beginners to first kick a ball, as well as challenge those with a few more playing hours under their belt. 

OA is a great place to meet so many different people and make friends, while staying fit. There is a great OA committee that keeps it running – lots of people contribute. Every week sees new faces and lots of people come back regularly. 

And of course the Cageys were born from training in the cage at OA. I think that has been a real testament to the joy of Open Access. Some of us had never played or even really watched football before. In our first match we had to explain what a throw-in was, but now we often play two or three times a week. That is such a great legacy of OA.

Who would make Dr Alice’s 5-a-side team from world football? 🌍

Mary Earps, Julian Dicks, Aitana Bonmati, Alexia Putellas, Tony Cottee – Steel at the back, silk in the middle, clinical up top 😆