
Gen Z is shaking up IndyCar's Millennial, Gen X established order
IndyCar's championship sees a Gen Z takeover with young drivers leading the pack.

Hashtag United Women triumphed over their reserves 7-2 in the 2026 BBC Essex Women’s Cup final. This match highlights the club's growth and local investment in women's football.
Mentioned in this story
“The worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in the early 1880s, and fitting of the 2026 BBC Essex Women’s Cup final, in which third-tier Hashtag United Women beat sixth-tier Hashtag United Women reserves 7-2.
Fans reading a copy of the match programme, featuring two Hashtag United club crests on its front page, might have felt a sense of deja vu owing to the 2024-25 quarter-final, when Hashtag’s first team beat the reserves 13-1. The team, founded by YouTuber Spencer Owen (real name Spencer Carmichael-Brown), whose YouTube channel Spencer FC boasts 1.93million subscribers, has a storied history in this competition.
A YouTube video on the Hashtag United Extra YouTube channel titled ‘If Both Teams Win…It’s a HASHTAG ONLY Final!’ has been viewed more than 20,000 times and chronicled the two semi-finals, played within half an hour of each other. Owen was at the reserve-team match but following the first team via a stream on his iPhone. For a club born of storytelling in the virtual world, they could not have asked for a better plot twist. “Hashtag will play Hashtag in the final,” went the commentary, “and in the background, there’s a double rainbow to signify just that. If that doesn’t get you subscribing, folks, I don’t know what will.”
Preparation for Thursday’s match-up presented some unique challenges. Hashtag’s reserves and first teams usually share a pitch, taking half each.
On Tuesday, the reserves had a quarter of the pitch, sharing it with the under-16s squad with which they work closely. “We actually hired a pitch on Friday away from them so that we could work on some things without them having eyes on us,” says manager Declan Murphy, who estimates he spends 10 to 20 hours a week managing the team on top of his full-time job and between ferrying his daughter to her matches for Arsenal and England Schools.
“After the final was confirmed, the reserves decided to do something that they’ve never done before the whole time I’ve been at Hashtag,” explains first-team captain Flo Jackson. “Even the girls who have been there for many seasons say this has never happened (before), but they decided to come and stand at the side and watch our session. I think it was a little bit of a mind game. It did put us on our toes a little bit. We thought, ‘What’s going on here’?”
“Some of our players maybe have wandered over during the drinks break and made sure they’re standing very, very close so that reserves can see that they’re watching — almost to say, ‘I’m going to put you under a bit of pressure here,’” says first team manager Dom Edwards. “But at the end of the day, it’s all good-natured.”
It is rare to know the opposition so intimately. Each side has access to the other’s entire archive of match footage. Reserve players have occasionally spent league games with the first team, albeit eligibility rules prevent them from playing for both teams in this cup. Murphy has managed players who have since graduated to the first team. Midfielder Emma Samways spent six months with the reserves while returning from an ACL injury.
Hashtag United Women defeated their reserves 7-2 in the cup final.
Hashtag United Women was founded by YouTuber Spencer Owen, also known as Spencer Carmichael-Brown.
This is the second time Hashtag United Women faced their reserves in a final, previously winning 13-1 in the 2024-25 quarter-final.
The reserves had limited pitch time as they shared it with the under-16s squad, prompting them to hire an additional pitch for preparation.

IndyCar's championship sees a Gen Z takeover with young drivers leading the pack.

Bournemouth has reached an agreement to appoint Marco Rose as their new head coach, succeeding Andoni Iraola.

Get ready for fantasy women's basketball drafts with rankings and strategies!

Aleix Espargaró ha sido operado y comienza su recuperación tras una grave lesión en Sepang.
See every story in Sports — including breaking news and analysis.
“They know how I am as a player, and we’ve played against them in training to practice match stuff and set pieces,” she says. “Even though we have tiers between us, they know some strategies of how to play against us.”
Among the players’ first questions was who would be playing in which kit. “I put my foot down as captain and said we deserve to have the home change room and the home kit because we’re the first team,” says Jackson. “You have to sort of stamp your little feet sometimes with that.”
“My worry was if my players, because they’re playing in the kit we normally play in, will pass to them at some point, just for natural instincts of looking up and seeing a kit that is their kit,” continues Murphy. “There are some that are naturally quite intimidated because there’s a big gap between the two teams in the tier system, but we also have a good handful of players that strongly believe they’re better than the first team players and they were right up for it.”
As light-hearted this feels, the downside is that an all-Hashtag final reflects a lack of competition in Essex and a need for investment in women’s football there. Since 2013, a Hashtag team has featured in all bar one of these finals and won eight of them (their wins prior to 2020 were under the name C&K Basildon.)
“It’s a little bit of a damning indictment of where women’s football in Essex is at the moment that we’ve got both teams in the final,” says Carmichael-Brown. “There’s obviously very big men’s clubs in Essex that are quite ambitious with their men’s teams — they just haven’t matched that on the women’s side, unfortunately.”
He cites his hopes for Colchester United, understood to be linked to a consortium involving former England and Chelsea captain John Terry, and Dagenham and Redbridge, in whom YouTuber KSI recently bought a minority stake. “Most of those teams are looking to change — it’s just a case of giving it a few years,” he continues. “The reality is we’ve had the success we’ve had because of a lack of investment in women’s football. We are Essex’s highest-ranked team in the country, so it is almost predictable that we’d be in the final. In the least immodest way possible, we’ve kind of conquered Essex. But even with us being so dominant, the people don’t really come out to support us.”
Hashtag hope that a move to Redbridge, South London, next season will help to foster a local fanbase, even if it will mean its women’s team will be outside of Essex and unable to defend the Essex Cup. “What a fitting way to end it,” Carmichael-Brown says, of a final, for Hashtag fans, that was not a must-win but a will-win.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Women's Soccer
2026 The Athletic Media Company