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London-based lawyer Rupinder Bains has joined the Football Association board as a non-executive director, the national governing body has announced. Bains, the founder and managing director of law firm Pinder Reaux, will represent the interests of the professional game alongside the chairman of the Premier League's football board Peter McCormick and Scunthorpe United chief executive James Rodwell. Her arrival brings the number of women on the board to two, following Buildbase chief executive Kate Tinsley's appointment as an independent director last month. Bains will also join the FA Council. In a statement, she said: "I'm very proud and honoured to be offered this role within the Football Association. This is an organisation with fantastic history and traditions, governing a huge constituency of footballing personnel from grassroots up to international level. "It is a significant moment in the governance of the FA and I am delighted to be embarking on a journey looking at the broader issues and I am hoping to be able to contribute to the evolving and developing nature of the Football Association and to the most widely supported sport in the world.'' Before this summer, Bains would have needed to hold a position at a club or league to be one of the professional game's representatives but the rules were relaxed as part of the raft of reforms the FA brought in to meet sports minister Tracey Crouch's new governance code. Another key element of that code is that each gender should have at least 30 percent representation on a governing body's board, which means the FA still needs to appoint another woman. The board is currently comprised of chairman Greg Clarke, FA chief executive Martin Glenn, independent directors Roger Devlin and Tinsley, Bains, McCormick and Rodwell from the professional game and Robert Cotter, Mervyn Leggett and Jack Pearce, who represent the national, or amateur, game. Clarke welcomed Bains onto the board saying she had a "demonstrable track record of success in business and a good knowledge of football from her legal and commercial work.''
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