Few would expect football clubs to be at the forefront of an effort to break the taboo around periods. Yet here we are

“Sorry to spoil your breakfasts with talk of periods,” tweeted one supporter of the On the Ball campaign, “but as a teenager who suddenly got her period at Stockport away & had to spend the whole afternoon and journey home on the coach with only a wedge of toilet paper & in a panic, this sort of thing would have been very welcome.”

Few would expect football clubs to be at the forefront of an effort to break the taboo around periods. Yet here we are. In less than five months 29 grounds have responded to the campaign of three female Celtic season-ticket holders and now stock free sanitary products.

“We’ve seen quite a lot of change in Celtic’s ethos, as a club open to all,” says Mikaela McKinley, one third of the On the Ball team. “We were aware the things going on in schools around the introduction of free products and we just thought that football was somewhere where we could make a change.

“It should be inclusive – that’s the opinion we have of our club. Sometimes it may seem that football fans aren’t inclusive or forward thinking but we are.”

McKinley, Orlaith Duffy and Erin Slaven began their campaign with an online petition, contacting Celtic the same day to ask for a meeting.

“Overall we got about 3,000 signatures, so there was quite a lot of noise around it and that was something Celtic were aware of,” says McKinley. In the buildup to their sit-down with the club the trio did their homework, contacting suppliers, looking at free vend options on machines and researching cost. “We had almost done the work for them,” she says. “One of the main things we did was tell them about all the negative things people had said because we didn’t want them to feel like it was just virtue signalling; it was a really important thing to make sure they really got it, and they did.”

We have got a lot of: ‘The club are doing great, can you not be happy with that?’ As if it’s a negative thing! Mikaela McKinley, On the Ball

From there the campaign snowballed. They had hoped it would be picked up elsewhere but were not ready for just how many clubs would adopt the issue. “The three of us are just doing this part-time,” McKinley says. “We all work or go to uni and different things, so really we never expected it to get this big. But it’s great.” Now they have three Premier League and three Scottish Premiership sides among the 29: Fulham, Huddersfield, Brighton, Celtic, Motherwell and Kilmarnock.

There have been criticisms of their campaign. McKinley says the softer element have given contentions such as: “‘If you can afford a ticket, then you can afford a tampon.’ We understand why it might seem that simple but it isn’t – there’s the bigger picture to think about. It’s not solely down to affordability.”

But not all responses have been palatable. The three regularly hear that they are lucky to have toilets at football, or should not be at games at all, while others have accused them of undermining Celtic’s on-field heroics. “We have got a lot of: ‘The club are doing great. Can you not be happy with that?’ As if it’s a negative thing.”

Research by the charity Plan International UK has found that one in 10 girls or women aged 14 to 21 have at some stage been unable to afford sanitary products, that 12% have used improvised sanitary wear and 49% have missed school because of their period.

The On the Ball women know their campaign does little to tackle these poverty-related issues directly – although Barnsley donated the fee they got for an article to the Red Box Project on On the Ball’s advice and Rochdale have a donation point to collect for schools – but they hope to help widen and normalise the discussion. “We know what we’re doing isn’t going to eradicate period poverty but it’s about highlighting the work that’s going on, putting it into public consciousness and getting guys and women talking about periods,” McKinley says.

“We know football is a male-dominated environment and that is one of the good aspects of it – that it gets guys talking about periods. That needs to happen.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Brighton are one of three Premier League clubs to have responded to the campaign. Photograph: Hannah Mckay/Reuters

Some will question the decision to target football clubs when VAT on sanitary products is still 5%, above other untaxed “essentials” such as Jaffa Cakes, chickpeas, crocodile meat and cake decorations.

But football is powerful. The biggest sport in the world can act as a lever on governments and society at large. And football clubs – even if many are more commercial entities than community clubs – do have a sense of responsibility to their local communities and fanbases, at the very least for appearances’ sake.

Sign up to The Recap, our weekly email of editors’ picks.

That three season-ticket holders have been able to open up a debate around periods – and get clubs to provide products for free, a step further than any Westminster government has promised – in one of society’s most masculine environments shows that, on this issue, society is more progressive than government.

The Scottish government announced in August that students at schools, colleges and universities would have access to free sanitary products. That decision has come at the end of a process that predates On the Ball. But there can be little doubt that football has played a role in normalising the discussion in Scotland, and it is spreading to England.

Talking points

• Benfica women recorded a 28-0 win in the first game of their debut season against Ponte de Frielas. Like Manchester United, the Portuguese club have entered the second tier of their domestic league. Darlene de Souza, one of nine goalscorers, scored eight.

Play Video 2:23 Benfica women set Portuguese record with 28-0 win over Ponte de Frielas – video

• Reigning champions Wolfsburg got off to a winning start as the Frauen-Bundesliga kicked off. The European player of the year, Pernille Harder, got the Champions League runners-up off the mark while the goalkeeper Mary Earps, signed from Reading in the summer, kept a clean sheet in the 3-0 defeat of Frankfurt.

• Following the shock departure of Neil Redfearn from Liverpool after two competitive games players have tweeted their support for the outgoing manager as fingers start to point at the club’s commitment to the team. Courtney Sweetman-Kirk was among those paying tribute: “Lost for words. A fantastic manager that built an incredible atmosphere in an extremely short period of time … but most of all a true gentleman and professional. Any workplace will be lucky to have him. All the best Redders.”

• Portland Thorns secured a place in the NWSL play-off final by coming from behind to beat Seattle Reign 2-1 in front of 14,179 fans. The second semi-final takes place on Tuesday night between North Carolina Courage and Chicago Red Stars, with the game having been relocated to Portland due to Hurricane Florence.

• Fifa has said that since it became mandatory for the transfer of women footballers to go through their international transfer system in January, 577 international transfers of professionals have been completed around the world, with about £380,000 spent on transfer fees and 94.5% were of players out of contract.