AT half-time in Ipswich Town’s match with Peterborough on Saturday afternoon, a 16-year-old girl who plays in pigtails will walk out on to the pitch to receive the acclaim of the Portman Road crowd. 

She is sponsored by Baby Ballers Academy and fans sing about her to the tune of “Baby, Give it Up” –  but on the pitch she is an assassin. 

Two-footed and strong in the air, Maddie Biggs demonstrated all her precocious qualities with a stunning first-half hat-trick away to Huddersfield Town last Sunday which propelled FA Women’s National South-East Division league leaders Ipswich Town Women into the fifth round of the FA Women’s Cup, the first fourth-tier side to achieve the feat since Oxford United Ladies (now Women) in 2013.

Thirteen years have passed since Ipswich Town men’s team made the last 16 of the FA Cup, despite entering the competition in the third round in all but one of those seasons. In contrast, their women’s team have come through six rounds and defeated two higher-division sides to reach the fifth round for the first time in their history.

Born in the same week that Real Madrid signed David Beckham from Manchester United, Biggs joined Ipswich Town’s u21 programme last summer after scoring 24 goals in 20 games for the Essex Regional Talent Club. 

She joined defenders Lucy Egan and Paige Peake, winger Sophie Peskett and manager Joe Sheehan in making the move to the Suffolk-based club from Essex RTC.

“I didn’t think I’d play first team at all this season to be honest” admits Biggs. “I thought I’d just be with the u21s. Paige and Sophie, who I’ve played with for three or four years, obviously help me when they’re around.” 

After starting Ipswich’s first game of the season, a 1-1 draw with Wimbledon in which she failed to score, Biggs had to settle for a place on the bench in Ipswich’s next home game, the “Old Farm” Derby at home to East Anglian rivals Norwich City. 

In front of a record-crowd of 761, Biggs came on to score her first senior goal, exquisitely curling a left-foot shot into the bottom corner to cap off a 4-1 win. 

“It was an amazing feeling obviously and to score against Norwich was even better.” 

The following month, Biggs proved once more that she was a player for the big occasion when she repeated the feat after the two sides were drawn against each other in the FA Cup, robbing a defender before thumping in the final goal of a 6-1 win for The Tractor Girls.

“Her development has been astronomical,” according to Thomas Whitby, founder of supporters group Tractor Girls on Tour. “I was surprised on the first day of the season to see Maddie’s name on the teamsheet against Wimbledon but I feel like she has now come into her own and that’s through playing regularly at first-team and under-21 level.”

In front of 1,115 fans last weekend at Kirklees Stadium, Biggs scored the game-changing opening goal after chasing down a hopeful through pass in the second minute. 

A mix-up between the Huddersfield goalkeeper and defender presented her with an open goal. 

“I didn’t think it would fall at all to be honest, I just pressed the keeper. I wasn’t sure what she was like so I just carried on going and it just fell to me and yeah, I put it in.”

The Tractor Girls never looked back, exploiting the space left by Huddersfield to roar into a four-goal half-time lead, with Biggs completing a first-half hat-trick. The second was a beautifully flicked near-post header after darting in front of her marker. 

“There was a lot of space when we were attacking because they had three at the back and there was three of us [attackers] there. It just seemed to fall to me really.”

After top-scorer Natasha Thomas scored a third, Biggs completed her hat-trick on the stroke of half-time, racing onto Thomas’s pass and showing composure beyond her years to flick the ball over the goalkeeper. 

She modestly claimed afterwards: “I’m always worst when I have too much time to think about it, it’s normally instinctive so I had a couple of seconds and just did what I thought was right really.”

In Monday’s fifth-round draw, the Suffolk side were rewarded with a tie away to FA Cup holders Manchester City. If selected, Biggs will go head-to-head against England captain Steph Houghton whose own playing career began at Sunderland the season before Biggs was born. 

“Obviously there’s lots of experienced players in that team. I think we’ll give it a good go and try and do our best really.”

One of four Ipswich players invited to watch the draw live on BBC Look East, Biggs’s exploits also made the front cover of the local paper. She said she’s getting used to the attention. “I didn’t expect it to happen, so it was a bit of a shock, but it’s alright now.”

In 13 first-team appearances so far this season, she has now scored eight goals, sometimes playing against defenders twice her age, and for Biggs the learning curve has been steep. 

“Playing against older women, they’re more experienced so they know how to get into your heads a bit more. We all just try and keep our cool and just play the game really.”

Having already represented England at u15 level on trips to Belgium and Switzerland in 2018, Biggs, who will turn 18 shortly before England host the Uefa Women’s Euros in 2021, is eager to earn further opportunities at international level. 

“I’ve been to St George’s Park a couple of times and I’ve met Phil Neville once but it’d be nice to get back in it and hopefully play.”

Despite being born in this century, Biggs’s first experience of playing the game, like so many female players before her, was against boys. 

“I started playing for a boys’ team because there wasn’t many girls’ teams around, then I started going for trials at places and it just kind of went on from there.” 

However, unlike previous generations, Biggs feels that the increasing exposure of the women’s game has now given players of her age female role-models to aspire to. 

“Since the World Cup last summer, I think more women are becoming idols. Some of the girls here love Lucy Bronze, so I think we are starting to look up to them more.”