Here come the girls!

The Women's Super League kicked off last night. At 5.30 Chelsea took on Arsenal in front of the TV cameras and a crowd of over 2000. Arsenal bagged the three points with a 1-0 victory over their London rivals. While that was going on I travelled to Sincil Bank, home of Lincoln City FC, to watch Lincoln Ladies take on their 'local' (as in 40 miles away) rivals Doncaster Belles.

Lincoln City are struggling in League 2 at the moment (they should never have got rid of ace ex- Huddersfield Town manager Pete Jackson so readily) and their ground could do with a bit of TLC. Nevertheless I find the old terraced housing that surrounds Sincil Bank comforting, a throw back to times when football was a game for the working classes located in the heart of their community. I'm all for a bit of nostalgia - and humour. I loved the fish and chip shop on the corner called the 'Back of the Net.'

There was an air of excitement outside the turnstiles. A quick survey of the queue showed a fair mix of people - male and female, young and old. I bought a programme - £1.50 - and liked the fact they were giving away postcards of some of the players with them. I got England international Sophie Bradley.

At the turnstiles I flashed my season ticket with pride (£24) and my daughter and her boyfriend paid their £6 entrance fee. Once inside, all the fans were ushered into the main stand - there is no need for segregation at women's matches. The crowd is neither large enough not ugly enough to warrant it. We found seats towards the back and above the half way line.

We could have done with a few drums and a 'singing end' to keep the momentum going but we did have a Donny Belles fan with a handbell (bell - Belles - gerrit?). Everytime it rang I thought lessons had ended or we were at a boxing match. I hope Arsenal fans don't bring a cannon (though Everton can bring toffees...)

Then the two teams emerged into the cold night air and the applause of the 742 crowd.

Guess who the ref was? Sian Massey, the fourth official caught up in the Richard Keys/Andy Gray sexism row (see earlier blog). Anyway, that small distraction aside, the match began. Doncaster Belles came out the stronger and looked more assured on the ball and in set pieces. Lincoln took longer to settle. Sue Smith and Jess Clarke got plenty of the ball but were thwarted by a solid Belles' defence.  Belles pushed and pushed and Vicky Exley deservedly scored just before the end of half time.
 Bringing on Sophie Walton after the break seemed to add that bit of impetus to the Imps. The second half was much more lively and both sides played some great football. My daughter, who'd watched the Chelsea v Arsenal match on TV, said they were just as good as the London teams. Casey Stoney (ex Arsenal) began to exert her influence with some beautifully controlled crosses. Sue Smith came closest to scoring the equaliser and keeper Kay Hawke pulled off an absolutely brilliant save towards the end to prevent Belles going 2-0 up.

So Belles drew first blood and took the three points but Lincoln Ladies have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of; they showed great potential. Ace captain Megan Harris and her team can hold their heads high and go into the next match full of confidence.

 Lincoln Ladies

Post-match post mortem

 Read the full match report on Lincoln Ladies website or Doncaster Belles'

Helena Pielichaty 

  

Women's Football - WSL

Tomorrow, Wednesday 13th April 2011, is a momentous day in the history of football. It's the day the new Women's Super League is launched. At 5.30 pm Chelsea take on Arsenal at the Tooting and Mitcham FC ground and at 7.45 Lincoln Ladies play Doncaster Belles at Sincil Bank. The Chelsea Arsenal match is live on ESPN.

The intitiative shows that, over a hundred years after Nettie Honeyball organised the first women's match between London North and London South, the FA is finally taking women's football seriously.

Nettie Honeyball, in full kit, organised the first games between two women's teams in 1895 to show that women were more than 'mere ornaments.'

        The super league will run for two years in the first instance and consists of 8 teams. The teams have been selected not only for their standard of football but also because they proved they can be commercially viable. Four players on each team will be paid up to £20,000 each. Top international players have been shared out between the clubs in an attempt to pool the talent so that no one team dominates. Whether this works or not waits to be seen. Arsenal Ladies have reigned supreme for a long time in the women's game with Everton chomping at their heels.

Tomorrow I'll be using my season ticket (£24.00) to watch Lincoln Ladies take on Doncaster Belles. Manager Rod Harris's Lincoln have the ebulliant England international Sue Smith on board as well as Jess Clarke, Casey Stoney and Sophie Bradley.  This is on top of an already decent squad who have been going from strength to strength over the years.

England midfielder and now Lincoln Ladies player Sue Smith

I really hope the WSL gets the attention and credit it deserves. Signs in the media are good and with the Women's World Cup coming up at the end of June things could be really exciting. England Women recently beat the USA 2-1. As the USA are ranked no.1 in the world that's a terrific boost ahead of the campaign.

Even better, I think, is that women's football has been filtering through to girls' magazines. In the current edition of Shout (#471) there's a double page feature on Liverpool's Hanna Keryakoplis. How brilliant is that? Women footballers in there between Lady Gaga and the Snog, Marry or Avoid quiz! Dead right too. Sports women have always been the healthier alternative to cat walk models and pop stars as far as role models go. I'd much rather have my daughter impressed by someone who looks good because she trains hard and is fit than because she's been airbrushed to fake perfection.

So I hope you'll all be following the women's game and supporting your local side whether they're in the WSL or not. The Premier League (National Division) still contains plenty of top teams. Huddersfield Town Ladies (North-East PL Division) for example were the half time guests on the pitch at the Galpharm on Saturday as they've recently linked up with HTAFC.

Nettie would be proud.

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

Girls FC series for 8-11s out now

Bad Break for Pilks

Anthony Pilkington

Say it ain't so!  Only three days after commenting on how well Anthony Pilkington has been playing for Huddersfield Town and disaster strikes. The number 11 had his ankle and fibula broken during the League 1 match against Rochdale last night.  As I write, he is having an operation to re-set his leg but it means he'll be out for at least the rest of the season. It's such a shame as he had been playing some excellent football, showing that extra bit of flair on the ball and netting 14 of the goals that has helped keep Town in contention all year and made him a favourite with the crowd.

I wish him well but advise him to stay off the caramel lattes (a request he put out on Twitter this morning) during his convalescence! 

                                                                                                  Helena Pielichaty

The League 1 title race heats up...

March 5th: Yeovil Town v Huddersfield Town

Attendance: 3,620

So we've arrived at this part of the season. The 'tickly' part as Steve Bruce said the other day.  The leagues are dividing themselves into thirds. The top third is going for promotion, the bottom third is panicking about relegation and the middle third is checking how many points they need to either join the top third or avoid being sucked into the bottom third.  One thing for sure is that very point counts from here on in.

The top of League 1 currently looks like this:

Brighton              32  played  65   points

Bournemouth       34  played  61   points

Huddersfield      34  played   57 points

Peterborough       33  played  56   points

Southampton        32 played   55   points

MK Dons             35 played   55   points

Brighton & Hove Albion are certainly looking like contenders for one of the two automatic promotion places. They've been consistently good all season. Bournemouth likewise. I'd love to see my team, Huddersfield, swap places with Bournemouth but after watching them at Yeovil on Saturday I am not getting my hopes up.

I haven't been to as many games as I would have liked to this season but every match I have attended, I've seen a different team on the pitch. I don't mean in terms of players - the names on the backs of their shirts are the same. I mean performance.  When I watched our opener against Notts County back in August I was filled with awe. Town were brilliant throughout the 90 minutes. They tore the newly promoted side to shreds and their 0-3 win away from home was a declaration of intent. A month later, I attended the Town v Yeovil match. Often slow to get going, we were atrocious for the first half and a deserved two-nil down until someone switched the 'on' button and hey, presto, the incisive play returned and we triumphed 4-2. Then there's the third type of Town match.  The type where they're slow to get going but there's no 'on' switch in the second half and the entire match is a woeful display of slopping passing and no one talking to each other. To make things worse, these matches are usually against opposition we should, in theory, beat. Strugglers like Dagenham and Redbridge for example or, like on Saturday, Yeovil Town. Yeovil, only 4 points above the drop zone, should have meant three points in the bag. But no.

It was just one of those awful matches where both sides played substandard football. It didn't help when Lee Peltier (ex- Yeovil, ironically) raised an elbow and was sent off after 12 minutes but even so Town were a shadow of the mighty team who took on Arsenal in the FA Cup only weeks earlier. In-form striker Anthony Pilkington showed some flare and in defence Peter Clarke was solid but all in all it was lack-lustre stuff as grey as the clouds above Huish Park. It was 1-1 in the end - Antony Kay equalised from a free kick - but we only just deserved the point.

On the plus side, the cornish pasty I had in the ground was lovely and the stewards at Yeovil were polite and friendly, if too zealous at checking the content of women's handbags. 'Could you lift your purse up so I can see underneath it?' the guy asked as he peered into mine.

'Are you expecting trouble?' I asked.

'It's Yeovil policy,' he explained.

'There's nothing in it. We're not Leeds fans, you know,' I joked.

'Don't mention Leeds,' he said, his face paling.

It's not great, as anecdotes go but it's the best I can do, given the circumstances.

Never mind. I'll keep the faith, as always. Come on Town. Up and at 'em.

Helena Pielichaty

  

First team to beat Man U this season...

So Wolves have pulled off another giant-killing act this season, and yes, sure I'm pleased (particularly as Spurs-supporting husband said we had 'no chance' - he didn't put it quite as politely as that, though). But now we need to start beating some of the less glam teams if we have any chance at all of staying up. I still think we can do it.
I got an email this week to my website (narinderdhami.com) from a girl who likes The Beautiful Game books and wants to join a football club. She said she was having difficulty finding one, though, so I pointed her in the direction of her local FA. I'm hoping girls' football continues to grow, despite the credit crunch and all the financial cuts that are being made - it'd be a shame to see it all collapse.
PS: Sorry, I almost forgot there that apparently 'women can't understand the offside rule'. Better go back to knitting tea cosies.

Unexpected Football Outbreak - Dan Tunstall

Something strange has been happening recently at the Walkers Stadium, home of my team, Leicester City. After years of functional, grinding, long-ball play, football has unexpectedly broken out.

Really, I suppose the credit has to go to Sven Goran Eriksson. Quite a few people were sceptical when he took over, expecting him to stick around for a month or two before disappearing with a nice redundancy package, but it looks like he's going to stay the course. And the changes that he's brought about, in a relatively short space of time, have been pretty remarkable.

First of all, Sven had to stop the rot that had set in during Paolo Sousa's brief and unhappy reign. That didn't take long. Since his appointment, our only home defeat has been to Premier League WBA in the Carling Cup, and we've gone from bottom of the Championship table in September to eighth in February, looking a good bet for the Play-offs.

But it's been the transformation of our playing style that has been the most amazing. Gone is our traditional 4-4-2, replaced by a fluid 4-3-3 formation, and suddenly we're scoring goals for fun. Since the start of November we've hit 2,2,1,5,2,2,2,4 and 4 goals in our home games, chalked up wins against promotion-chasing Forest and Swansea and held Manchester City in the FA Cup. Don't say it too loud, but we've started to be entertaining. Last weekend, the crowd were shouting "Ole" as the passes flew from one blue shirt to another. It was partly tongue-in-cheek, and we were playing Barnsley, but, hey, you've got to start somewhere.

The only slightly disappointing aspect of this turnaround is the fact that it has been achieved with a team increasingly filled with Premier League loan players. Many of the stalwarts of the Nigel Pearson era have found themselves relegated to the bench, or have even left the club. It's a shame, but it's the nature of the modern game. And while the new recruits are showing such commitment to the cause, and the football is this good, who's complaining?

http://www.dantunstall.com/

From Heroes to loads of Zeros

We have this book at home - Day of the Match by Scott Murray and Rowan Walker. It
records significant events that happened in football on each day of the year. September 8th 1888, for instance, was the first day of the football league; March 29th Pickles the dog becomes a film star (1966). I reckon Murray and Walker might want to revise January 31st for any future editions. Instead of 'Ghana 0-2 Ivory Coast:  Elephants sent to military camp (2000) they might want 'Mad Monday: chaos on transfer deadline day' (2011).
Talk about history unfolding before your eyes. The media went into meltdown. Ten years ago - actually even one year ago - we'd never have seen all the wheeling and dealing going on behind the scenes but now with the Internet and Twitter and Sky Sports News anyone could follow events as they unfolded. On this day a record £130 million was spent in less than twenty four hours but the main stories focused on Fernando Torres (transferred from Liverpool to Chelsea for a whopping £50 million and Andy Carroll (Newcastle United to Liverpool for £35 million).

What I found interesting was the reaction of the fans. As reporters and journalists stood outside various stadia, ready to update the newest instalment (Torres is in a helicopter.... no he isn't ... yes he is... Carroll doesn't want to leave Newcastle... oh, yes he does...no way...) fans gathered behind them. Some were grinning, happy enough to be on the telly but others were becoming increasingly angry.

Liverpool fans were the first to make their views known. Torres, their hero, had let them down. It was no secret he'd been unhappy at the club but the speed and manner of his departure caught them by surprise. They reacted angrily. On Twitter, Bali Rai, urged everyone to send their shirts to charity. Others were less measured as this picture shows:

Worse still, Torres received death threats from a few Liverpool fans. Death threats! That's when it gets mental. OK, yes, when a player leaves one club for another it can feel lika a betrayal but death threats? That's beyond stupid. Sadly, it isn't uncommon. So what is it about football that drives usually sane, perfectly ordinary people to such extremes? What does the game unleash in them?

Maybe it's because for the die-hard fans (and remember, fan is short for fanatic) their team is an extension of their family. When I go to watch Huddersfield Town play and the singing end is giving it some welly, the song that gets to me every time is an old Elvis number. 'Take my heart, take my whole life too...' we sing, arms outstretched, lungs fit to burst.  '...for I can't help falling in love with you...'
You is the club. The players are part of that club. The fans adore them and that adoration can last a lifetime, even when a player has retired or joins another team - as long as he joins that team in the right circumstances. Fans get that players have to move on. They know they can't hang on to their golden boy forever - that he'll have to be cut loose from the apron strings. But there's a right way and a wrong way to leave the nest and neither Carroll nor Torres were seen as leaving in the right way. But death threats? That's another ball game altogether...

Helena Pielichaty