The Women's Super League - an update

Well, the Women's Super League is half way through. The eight teams are having a break as players prepare for the Women's World Cup that starts at the end of June.

The table looks like this:

Team                           Played    Points
Birmingham City              7          17
Arsenal                            6          13
Chelsea Ladies                7          12
Everton                            6           7
Bristol Academy              7           7
Doncaster Belles              7          7
Lincoln Ladies                 7           5
Liverpool                         7           3


As you can see from the points there seems to be a definite gap between the top three and the bottom five. I'm not sure how true a reflection of the teams this is. I've watched Lincoln Ladies play three times and read the reports in the Lincolnshire Echo for matches I haven't attended and in my opinion the difference in standard between them and their opposition hasn't been that great. The Lady Imps have never once been swamped or thrashed by their opposition - even Birmingham and Arsenal. When they've lost it's been by one goal. The main missing ingredient seems to be the lack of a striker to put the ball away. If it's the same for Liverpool, Doncaster and Bristol the mid season break will give coaches a chance to shore up the deficiencies and come out firing on all cylinders after the World Cup. Well, that's my theory anyway!

I think the FAs initial idea of 'pooling' talent has worked fairly well. The idea of sharing the top players round has made for much more even and fast paced games. What I'm not sure about is how the original 'base' team has adjusted to the new hotshot signings and vice versa. Teams take a while to bed in and get used to each other. And how do some team members like the fact that while they're earning peanuts, four of their squad are on £20K (still peanuts but jumbo variety). I'd love to be a fly on the dressing room wall!

One good thing about the new league has been the increased interest in media terms. There was a whole ten minutes about the origins of the game on the One Show last Wednesday. Gabby Logan interviewed Gail Newsham about Dick, Kerr Ladies (see previous blogs). In girls magazines, too, women footballers are increasingly being mentioned and features. This is real progress. The more girls read about, and see, sportswomen as media-worthy the more they'll choose them as role models instead of vacuous wannabes who've done nothing more than look pretty and got ahead thanks to daddy's money.

The daily newspapers have been less enthusiastic. After an initial flurry of interest it's back to the same old mass reportage of the men's game and nothing about the women. The good old Guardian seems to be about the only one who regularly reports results. However on a local level it's a different matter. The Lincolnshire Echo has been fantastic at supporting their WSL team. On Friday they carried a whole page report of the match between Lincoln Ladies and Chelsea, complete with photos, interviews, stats and marks out of ten for each player. In other words, they got the same coverage as the men's team. OK, poor Lincoln City FC have just been relegated out of the football league so there's not a lot for the Echo to write home about there but to be fair the Echo has always been generous in it's coverage of the women's game. Well done that paper!

Twitter is even better. Through that I've discovered that there are loads of websites and contacts dedicated to women's football. http://www.shekicks.net/  is one. So we're getting there. Now, if my Girls FC books can be part of that groundswell, I'll be chuffed to bits!

Helena Pielichaty http://www.helena-pielichaty.com/