Footballers in Iran’s professional women’s league are to undergo mandatory gender tests to establish that they are fully female.

The country’s football governing body is bringing in the random checks after it was revealed that several leading players – including four in the national women’s team – were either men who had not completed sex change operations, or were suffering from sexual development disorders.

Iran’s national women’s team. Not a man among them. Or at least there soon won’t be with all new ‘medical’ checks.

The ‘random checks’ will work like this: medical ‘examiners’ will turn up unannounced at training sessions of teams playing in Iran’s women’s premier league, as well as those playing in the indoor league, known as footsal, and, um, well, you can probably guess the rest.

Ahmad Hashemian, head of the Iranian football federation’s medical committee and apparently a qualified doctor told IRNA, the state news agency: “If these people can solve their problems through surgery and be in a position to receive the necessary medical qualifications, they will then be able to participate in [women’s] football.”

Emphasis: These people.

Which is not really the point and I digress.

Player’s from the Iranian women’s national soccer team after withdrawing from their qualifying match against Jordan for the 2012 London Olympic Games.

The point being that in order to play football in Iran women must be OK with a random gynecological exam as part of their training regime.

As if endless doggy runs were not enough to put someone off playing.