Rosie Hodgson is one of the most successful female powerchair footballers across England and Europe. She is now set to try and expand her trophy cabinet with a sixth Disability FA Cup win with her club, Aspire PFC.
The EE Disability FA Cup Finals return to St. George's Park on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th June 2025. The weekend sees some of the best impairment-specific footballers in the country compete in six finals over two days, including amputee, partially sighted, blind, cerebral palsy, powerchair and deaf.
During the build-up to the final, our editor, Emma Purcell, had the pleasure of speaking to Rosie about her incredible 15-year career in powerchair football, her preparations for thematch against league rivals West Brom, and the importance of developing more female players in disability football.
Scroll down for the powerchair Disability FA Cup final result, match report and highlights.
Rosie Hodgson: a journey through powerchair football
Rosie Hodgson was diagnosed with primary lymphoedema, a chronic swelling of one or more body parts, when she was just five years old. At the age of nine, she became a wheelchair user when her pelvis collapsed. She was introduced to powerchair football by her physiotherapist, and she has gone on to have a glittering career with multiple league and cup wins across several clubs. Rosie opened up more about how she first got into powerchair football, and gave an overview of her sporting career to date: “I've been playing football for 15 years now. I first got into the sport when I was younger. I didn't really know the full extent of my disability and my illness. I fell off a lilo in a shallow swimming pool, and my spine and pelvis collapsed. I went from an active child running around on a playground to being quite lonely. “When I went back to school from the summer holidays, my physiotherapist was quite eager to get me into sport, try and get me into meeting people and getting a social life again. So we tried wheelchair basketball, which didn't really work out. But powerchair football stuck, and I was hooked instantly. “I've played for quite a few clubs. I played for Norwich City when I first started until 2014. Then I transferred to Muscle Warriors in the summer of 2014, and did one year there “I've played at Aspire ever since for the past nine years, where I've won the Championship twice, Premiership twice, the FA Cup five times and Champions League once.” Rosie went on to give a brief description of how powerchair football is different from able-bodied football: “Powerchair football is completely different because it’s four-a-side instead of 11-a-side and we're in specialised custom-made powered wheelchairs, which go about 10 kilometres an hour and they are very high powered and can help get us around the pitch quite quickly and efficiently.” She added: “There's no offside rule but there's a two-on-one rule instead, which means if two of the opposition players are on the player attacking the ball at one time, that's a foul.”Aspire PFC’s rise, resilience, and road to the cup final
Aspire Powerchair Football Club (Aspire PFC), established in 2002, stands as the UK's pioneering powerchair football team and has grown into Europe's most decorated club. As the first official member of the Wheelchair Football Association, Aspire PFC has clinched a record eight Premiership titles, seven FA Disability Cups, and made history in 2024 by becoming the first English club to win the EPFA Champions Cup (Champions League).
The club's dominance has continued into the 2024/2025 season, finishing unbeaten in the South East Regional League with a staggering 82 goals scored and only two conceded.
Rosie gave more insight into how Aspire’s latest season went:
“This season has been quite different. We had a summer transfer window last season, and we lost quite a vital player to our team. So this season, we've been trying to learn how to change and adapt the way we play. It's been a tried and tested version in preparation for going to the Club World Cup and the FA Cup final.
“We’ve been doing really well in the FA Cup. We've won all our games. We've only conceded two goals as well.
“In September, we had to start from scratch with our team. And we had a new arrival as well, which helped with that. We changed our formation and playing style to accommodate all of the players. But we found changing it up probably didn't work the best, so we then had to revert back to our old formation, and then tweak and add things to accommodate other players.”
Rosie continued to share how confident and excited she is to fight for another FA Cup win against their league rivals, West Brom:
“We won against them in the league in the final game of the season, 2-0. It was an incredible game. It was electric. It felt like a cup final in itself. It was like a demo version of the cup final, and it helped give us a lot of confidence and be ready to go into that final.”
Rosie will be joined by Aspire and England captain Jon Balding, teen England player Dan Mclellan and Champions League double goalscorer Sally McNeill.
The West Brom lineup is set to include 18-year-old newbie Oliver Rock, WBA player and Villa Lions coach Brad Bates and England international and charity worker Dylan Kelsall. Also with them will be Chris Gordon, who is England’s vice captain, 2024 FA Cup Player of the Match and Managing Director of G5 Sporting Solutions, which supplies the current football wheelchairs.
As a club, West Brom have five female players competing in their 3 National League Squads. Abigail Bolt, Amy Lee-Julian and Amy Wharton play for WBA Throstles who also compete in the WFA Premier League, and Amy Sherman and Laura Evans play for WBA Dudley and compete in the WFA Championship. Currently they don't have any female players in the First Team squad, although Abigail Bolt was set to compete with them in the Club World Cup, which has been taken place from 23rd to 27th June 2025.
Rosie Hodgson’s coaching journey: from the pitch to the dugout
As well as her talents on the pitch, Rosie has also had an incredible ride off it as a powerchair football coach. Speaking about her coaching success so far, Rosie said: “I helped coach my first team ever, Norwich. I had to take a bit of a step back this season as they got promoted to the Premiership, which is one of my biggest achievements with them as a coach. I've been in the background helping with training sessions to help guide their Community Foundation coaches. “I've been coaching them since 2019. I started off coaching the Canaries team, which is their secondary team, and I did regional level with them. Then, in the 2022/2023 season, I was invited to become their full-time coach alongside the Community Foundation coach. “In that season, we finished fifth in the Championship, which was a really good result, considering there wasn't as much of the squad available to fully commit to all the weekends and play throughout the whole season. Some of them had to start halfway through. So, having half a squad to work from halfway through the season and finish, a relatively respectable place was a really good achievement. “Then the following season, the 2023/2024 season, we didn't even realise until we got home that we'd qualified for the playoffs. So we qualified for the third-place playoffs, where we met the third-from-bottom team in the Premiership… and whoever wins then gets either promoted or relegated, and our team, Norwich, got promoted to the Premiership, and that was one of my greatest achievements with them. It was a brilliant time.” When asked if she would consider coaching full-time when she retires from her playing days, Rosie replied: “Definitely. I don't think anyone ever truly leaves the sport because there are so many players who have retired and gone into coaching, like my teammate, Bobby Williams, who is retired now and is going to become Aspire’s full-time coach. “I would love to do that because I feel like I've had such a positive experience in this. The sport has had such a positive impact on my life. I would like to share it with other people, inspire other people to come and try and support too.”Championing media coverage and female representation in powerchair football
With regards to the conversation about more media coverage in disability football, Rosie stressed that although it’s great that TNT Sports is broadcasting the FA Cup finals, many more milestone moments should be available to watch and hopefully inspire more people to join powerchair football:
“Last year, for example, Aspire were the first team ever from England to win the Champions League, and I felt like that should have in itself had a lot more media coverage and recognition. It's not publicised as much as I think it should, and we struggle getting players into the sport.
“I feel if it had more of a spotlight on the sport in the media, it would really help get more players and fill in minorities of players, like women. Only 15% of players are female in the sport, which we're trying to tackle and try and do different things to engage more females in our sport. Also, try and see and work alongside the Wheelchair Football Association to create more targeted days for women to come together in our sport and celebrate female participation.
“But with the FA Cup, it would be cool if the whole thing was publicised more. We have our own YouTube channel, the WFA, where they live stream all our games. But it would be cool if, instead of one day of the year, there were more than that to be publicised. It's not very accessible for a lot of people, which blows my mind in a way because it's a disability based sport, but you're not making it accessible to watch.”