FA insists 'fairness' will be priority as it considers toughening trans rules

The Football Association has promised to prioritise "fairness" for competing athletes as the game considers following rugby league and swimming in toughening transgender rules.

Both English football's national governing body and Fifa are in the process of refining the current "case by case" approach to restrictions in female categories across the game.

After a week in which the Culture Secretary and Lord Coe hinted elite sport must be uncompromising, Debbie Hewitt, the FA's chairwoman, admitted football faces some difficult decisions. "I think it is a really tricky subject," she said. "We talk about inclusiveness but it has to be inclusive for everybody and it has to be fair - that’s the line that any sports administrator has to think about. Is the competition fair and are we making sure that it is inclusion on both sides?

Transgender athletes in all sports are facing the prospect of potential rule changes after week which has seen swimming, rugby league, and, to a lesser extent, cycling announce tougher rules in women's sport.

Women's international rugby league matches will no longer allow trans women to compete, the International Rugby League (IRL) said on Tuesday. The announcement came just 36 hours after Fina, swimming's world governing body, voted to stop transgender competitors from taking part in women's races if they have gone through part of male puberty.

World Athletics president Lord Coe has also hinted track and field could follow swimming in banning transgender athletes from elite competition.

Football is at a less advanced stage in announcing a shake up at the elite level. Fifa is in the early stages of a consultation for the international game. However, after Nadine Dorries signalled she had a more relaxed attitude towards lower level competition, the FA appears fairly advanced in its thinking for the grass-roots game.

Mark Bullingham, the FA's chief executive, signalled the game could end with different transgender policies - one for the elite end and another for the grass-roots. “We have our own policy with grass-roots we are working on at the moment and Fifa is doing a consultation for the elite of the game," he said. "There might be a slightly different approach to grass-roots than you would have for the elite.”

Dorries has previously told LBC: "What I would say is that where it's more important is elite sport and qualifying sport. In community sports, fun rides, that kind of thing, that's all fine. Fun cycles, where a whole community is involved, that's not the issue. The issue is qualifiers and elite sport where women train for years to become a cyclist, a swimmer or a runner or whatever and then find themselves suddenly with somebody who's been through puberty and has a huge advantage over them that they just can't compete against. That is unfair, and the principle of inclusion can never trump fairness."

Coe, meanwhile, said he had repeatedly pointed out that "biology trumps gender" as he appeared to welcome Fina’s plans to create an open category and a protected female category. The World Athletics president said the body had scheduled a discussion with its council at the end of the year both on its current regulations on trans women, as well as on those governing the likes of Caster Semenya and others with differences in sex development (DSD).

“We see an international federation asserting its primacy in setting rules, regulations and policies that are in the best interest of its sport," Coe, who was a guest of Fina at its World Championships, said in response.

"This is as it should be. We have always believed, and repeated constantly, that biology trumps gender and we will continue to review our regulations in line with this. We have always said our regulations in this area are a living document, specific to our sport, and we will follow the science. We continue to study, research and contribute to the growing body of evidence that testosterone is a key determinator in performance and have scheduled a discussion on our DSD and transgender regulations with our council at the end of the year.”