Corner flag to catwalk: the footballer going for Miss Herts

A sports-mad Jewish girl from north London about to take part in the finals of the Miss Hertfordshire competition has spoken of swapping the training ground changing rooms for those of a beauty pageant.

Samantha Miller, 20, of Broadfields, Edgware, says she feels a bit like Sandra Bullock’s FBI character in the popular film Miss Congeniality, who enters a beauty pageant as part of an undercover operation.

“It will be a completely different scene to go from a football changing room to a beauty pageant changing room but it will be a new experience and something I wanted to try,” she said.

Miller, a self-confessed “tomboy” known for her big curly hair, took time off from playing for West Ham Ladies to beat 250 other potential beauty queens and get into the final of the regional contest. And despite the cuts and bruises she gets out on the football field, she is “a girly girl at heart”.

“Football takes up a big part of my life and when I’m not playing football I’m usually swimming or in the gym so it will be nice to dress up for and show off my girly side,” she said ahead of the 13 April event. “I play sports but I am a girly girl at heart. There are different sides to me.”

The sports science student says she first got into football through Maccabi fun sessions at Rowley Lane. “I got the opportunity to go to Detroit for the Maccabi Games and the year after I went to the Maccabiah in Israel and then European Games in Austria, all amazing experiences,” she said.

“The girls at football think it’s really cool that I’m doing the competition, hopefully it will give them more confidence to do something like this.”