Odense Women

When Odense's women footballers walked out on Odense Boldklub in 2016, they set up on its own as Odense Q, and the badge was drawn from Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling." The letter Q stood for "quality" and the name that grew out of it, the Ugly Ducklings, outlasted the jersey it first appeared on.

That jersey was Bordeaux red, worn at Marienlystcentret, a ground that held barely 1,200 people, and the football played there in the early years gave the nickname an uncomfortable literalism: Odense Q finished bottom of the league in its first season and went down. Tenna Kappel stayed through the leanest of it, making 114 appearances for the club, still the most by anyone who has played for it.

Independence lasted seven years. In June 2023, Odense Sport & Event, the company behind OB, bought 90 per cent of Odense Q, a deal driven less by reconciliation than by UEFA's licensing rules, which required a men's and women's side entered in European competition to sit under one roof. The club was renamed Odense Boldklub Q, and in July 2024 it gave up Bordeaux red for OB's own red and black. It now plays at Nature Energy Park, a ground that seats 15,790, in the colours the women's side wore back when it was still just OB's section, founded in 1971 and twice champions of Denmark before it ever thought of leaving.