AT half-time in Ipswich Town’s match with Peterborough on Saturday afternoon, a 16-year-old girl who plays in pigtails will walk out on to the pitch to receive the acclaim of the Portman Road crowd. 

She is sponsored by Baby Ballers Academy and fans sing about her to the tune of “Baby, Give it Up” –  but on the pitch she is an assassin. 

Two-footed and strong in the air, Maddie Biggs demonstrated all her precocious qualities with a stunning first-half hat-trick away to Huddersfield Town last Sunday which propelled FA Women’s National South-East Division league leaders Ipswich Town Women into the fifth round of the FA Women’s Cup, the first fourth-tier side to achieve the feat since Oxford United Ladies (now Women) in 2013.