“There might be some casualties,” Campbell says, “but that’s going to be the reality.”
Thus Sue Campbell, Head of Women’s Football with The Football Association 2016-23, glibly evaluates the future of the Lewes FC Women and Durham FC Women continued presence in the top 2 flights of women’s football.
I have argued ever since the start up of the Women’s Premiership and Championship that women’s football needs to evolve down a different trajectory from men’s football, and that to simply end up mimicking it will be to the detriment of women’s football both as a spectacle and as a healthy independent entity.
Women’s football needs to more be more based in the past. This is not backward thinking in any shape or form, this is just because football used to be fair then and a sport accessible to everybody, not just accessible through football subscriptions and even those aren’t accessible to everybody. It was more interesting and competitive and more locally based, devoid of foreign ownership ghosting lifelong supporters and familial club ties.
I’ve always been incredibly disappointed in my club which has a high media profile over the years, not striving for an independent model for women’s football, an alternative to the besmirched and slightly unpleasant modern game until it became apparent the ‘mood music’ was turning sour. I could go on for ages about the failings of men’s modern football, but I think we are all aware of most of those, and it’s so disappointing to see women’s football simply falling into a tried and tested model at the expense of pure football and supporter values.
This is all being done as a quick fix, a cash grab from pressure within and outside women’s football. Seeing the reality of slow progress in the growth of the game, outside the popular international game, as not something to try and fix organically in a smart way, but simply going for the lowest common denominator, a cash grab copying the tried and tested men’s game.
We have already seen tiers 1 and 2, of the Women’s Premiership and the Championship evolve over the last few years into the stupefyingly dull position where the top 6 richest clubs are you guessed it dominant in the top 6, and Lewes, Durham and the London City Lionesses are filling the wooden spoon positions.
To me there were far better ways to develop women’s football, in a more organic and fan friendly manner, and to go off on its own trajectory appealing to its own growing fan base rather than just doing the simplest thing possible and copying the men’s model. The end result being uncompetitive football that is just as dull as the top tier of English football.
The irony is, yes, there will be a short-term influx of cash, but women’s football simply cannot compete for mass audience appeal against men’s football like for like. A fresh spectacle could long-term bring in a fresh audience if nurtured properly.
Let’s face it, as is, Newco has the commercial interests of women’s football at heart not the long-tr=erm health and development. Who wants to see Manchester United Women play Liverpool Women or Manchester United play Durham or Lewes Women? What is the commercial benefit of a game in the romantic glare of Old Trafford opposed to what can be a slightly bleak environment of a wet Dripping Pan in Lewes, a beautiful stadium to watch your football match but not TV friendly or of mass interest. Unless the footballing authorities created a league and governance where this sort of game can be a must watch. It is about changing perceptions.
We all know the first few rounds of the FA Cup where non-league and the league clubs scrap it out, as a time of high interest for real football fans, why not build a league around that happening regularly and keeping it quirky, interesting, grounded, organic and everything that a lot of people want from football.
Of all women’s team in the UK, which is the best supported per head of capita? Lewes. We have a population of 17,000 and sometimes bring in gates of 2,000. Down the road Brighton with a population 15 times our size, they are lucky to get that at many games. There is a vast football audience that is simply disenfranchised and looking for something new to believe in and all the FA and Newco can come up with is more of the same.
But the chances of this now happening are limited and it is unlikely in three years time Lewes and Durham will be anywhere near the top two flights. I give us and Durham one more year tops if both of us manage to stay up for a farewell season. London City lionesses do appear to have thankfully been saved by the huge recent multi million pound investment to keep the flag flying for clubs not affiliated to the humdrum men’s league.
What galls me is the total lack of imaginative thinking in women’s football other than following the bleedin’ obvious. You rarely see debate on the future and that is why commercial interests have simply come in and swept the idea of a competitive footballing structure away. But I guess nobody kicked off when the Doncaster Belles were dumped by the football authorities so why will they now that Lewes and Durham will be forced out.
But when the Belles were jettisoned there was no great leap forward and as the Beatles mused. ‘Money can’t buy you love’
The Rights of Fans. 