Sunderland prove elite women’s football plays second fiddle to men’s youth teams | Suzanne Wrack

The decision of Sunderland to relocate their women’s team miles from home – turfed off the Academy of Light training pitches and out of their Hetton Centre home ground – follows a worrying pattern. The move, from the club that kickstarted the careers of a host of England internationals now laden with silverware such as Lucy Bronze, Jill Scott, Demi Stokes, Jordan Nobbs and the Manchester City and England captain Steph Houghton, is a further blow to a team who seemed to be thriving in recent years.
Promotion to the top tier of women’s football in 2015, having won the WSL 2, was followed by an impressive fourth-place finish – staying in the WSL 1 after promotion is increasingly difficult as the gulf between those arriving in the league and the professional teams at the top continues to grow. A challenging 2016 saw them drop to seventh, before they pulled up to fifth behind Chelsea, Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool – the top four professionalised sides – in the Spring Series at the start of the year.
That Spring Series position was all the more impressive given the situation the players found themselves in four months before the interim league got under way. An announcement of reversion to part-time status after three years with a mixture of full-time and part-time players – misleadingly pitched as a positive move by the club chief executive, Martin Bain – reflected the commitment of the club to its women’s team. It forced out players such as the Northern Ireland international Rachel Furness, in search of full-time employment elsewhere.
This latest change from the club, which will add lengthy journey times to evening training for a side made up entirely of part-time players and distances the women’s side from Sunderland AFC as a whole, is the first noticeable casualty of the FA’s decision to switch the league from a summer to winter season. Although the seasonal change is beneficial to players’ personal lives, leaving fewer random intervals between games (maintaining momentum) and fits in significantly better with the international calendar, how clubs balance their women’s teams’ training and playing alongside the men’s timetables remains unknown.
What we do know is that on the list of a club’s priorities, the men’s team will always come out on top. The women must clear off the official Sunderland training pitches and head to Northumbria University’s Coach Lane campus to make way for the men’s youth teams. It’s also what is happening in Paris, where according to Le Parisien the Champions League runners-up Paris Saint-Germain are being forced to find a new home, with pitch priority being given to the boys’ youth teams at the Camp des Loges training centre. Even at the top, women’s football doesn’t even play second fiddle.
In north-east England, following on from the decision to switch back to part-time players, Sunderland’s commitment to its women’s team has to be questioned.
The future for a Sunderland women’s team who reached the 2016 FA Cup semi-final looks bleak
The future for a Sunderland women’s team who reached the 2016 FA Cup semi-final looks bleak. A move so far from their home, within touching distance of their local rivals Newcastle, could be devastating. BBC figures showed the Black Cats were one of three WSL clubs in 2016 to see a drop in attendances on the previous year. Turnout at the Hetton Centre fell by 24%, the biggest drop in WSL 1, to an average of 710. A logistically problematic move for fans could well send those figures plummeting further, increasingly harming sustainability. Yes, balancing conflicting schedules is hard but in the men’s game solutions to problems are found. There is no challenge too big – a World Cup in the searing Qatari heat is doable, Tottenham can play a season at Wembley; there are many examples. In contrast the women’s game logistical barriers, even relatively small ones, become insurmountable.
The regression of the Black Cats, alongside the collapse of Notts County on the eve of the Spring Series just weeks after the FA announced its impressive Gameplan for Growth – aiming to double participation and support for women’s football by 2020 – show some of the huge hurdles the still fledging sport faces on the road to sustainability. Tragically at present no club is safe.
The news, broken by the BBC last week, that the FA is consulting on whether to change the Women’s Super League into a fully-professional one-tier league presents further challenges. Everyone with an interest in women’s football wants to see professionalism increase. The intention is correct: more professional sides in the top tier will help increase the competitiveness of the league across the board. Competitive leagues are more attractive for sponsors and spectators. However after a battle to open up promotion and relegation to and from the WSL in 2016, of which Women’s Premier League winners Tottenham are the latest beneficiaries, there is also a feeling that removing on-field rewards in favour of league placement based on meeting off-field criteria isn’t the way to go about solving these problems. Clubs lower down the ladder and at grassroots level, those crucial to the long-term growth of the sport, won’t be big beneficiaries of this move. In fact the gap between themselves and the top will look increasingly large.
Clubs such as Sunderland would find their league status under threat. Whether this move would motivate them to meet the FA’s licensing requirements and seriously commit to the growth of women’s football or cut ties with their women’s team entirely is impossible to tell. But their recent track record offers an indication of attitudes at the club. With women’s teams reliant on men’s clubs it’s very difficult to see a time where the women’s team is the first thing to face the axe when the going gets tough.
Tinkering with the set-up of the women’s leagues is necessary, from top to bottom. They are not perfect by any stretch. But wholesale change at this stage may be premature. The WSL was created in 2011, the WSL 2 in 2014. The switch to a winter season is taking place this year. It doesn’t feel like these leagues have had time to develop. Such frequent change means we haven’t had a period of stability to accurately assess how well these formats work. Ultimately these seemingly bold moves could be detrimental to the long-term viability of the women’s rickety pyramid.
• Players competing in the top tier of Australian women’s football, the 10-year-old W-League, will receive pay increases and better conditions after a historic collective bargaining agreement between the Football Federation Australia, the Westfield W-League clubs and Professional Footballers Australia.
The two-year deals guarantee all players a minimum $10,000 (£6,100) retainer, rising to $12,200 for 2018-19. The change would see the average for the 2017-18 season rise from $6,909 to $15,500. Previously many players have been considered amateur, receiving expenses only. The agreement also provides contractual certainty, a significantly increased salary cap, an agreed commercial framework to underpin the growth of the women’s game, improved minimum medical standards, the outline of the first ever formal maternity policy and the establishment of a formal partnership with the players through the Professional Women’s Football Committee. The highest earning Australian professionals are expected to now earn at least $130,000 a year.
• Arsenal’s Jodie Taylor and Jordan Nobbs won Player of the Year and Goal of the Year awards respectively at the annual FA Women’s Football Awards last Friday. Nobbs also picked up players’ player of the year and Taylor was given a standing ovation for her golden boot win from England’s Euro 2017 campaign. The Bristol City forward Lauren Hemp took home Young Player of the Year having scored five goals in U-17 Euro 2017 qualifying as well as scoring once in the finals themselves.
• Ellie Brazil, who was nominated for Young Player of the Year, has left Birmingham City to join the Serie A champions Fiorentina. The 18-year-old played for England in the U-19 European Championship finals, starring against Italy.
• Scotland have named Rachel Corsie as their captain following the retirement of their most-capped player, Gemma Fay, after Euro 2017. Corsie, picked by the new head coach, Shelley Kerr, will lead out the team for the first time against Hungary on 14 September before the side embark on their campaign for World Cup qualification.
The defender plays for Seattle Reign in the National Women’s Soccer League in the US. They are clinging to hopes of a play-off place after a 94th-minute equaliser against Orlando Pride kept them in the race.
The Arsenal forward Kim Little, who devastatingly missed the side’s maiden European Championship finals through injury, has been named Scotland’s vice-captain.
• The euphoria of Holland’s surprise Euro 2017 win doesn’t seeming to be wearing off. The Oranje’s World Cup 2019 qualifier against Norway on 24 October, taking place in Groningen’s 22,329-capacity stadium, sold out within three days.

SOURCE : GUARDIAN SPORTS
posted by CAMPUS94