For those that don't know, this is the plan for women's football for the next 5 or so years and can be found here: http://www.thefa.com/~/media/46ff14a...4fa4.ashx?dl=1 Reading it, it's clear the FA considers any club not in the WSL worthless. Indeed they have a pyramid of how they see football in this country and non-WSL sides are considered inferior to the friggin' YOUTH and RESERVE sides of teams in the WSL and barely one step above schools. The ONLY mention of any clubs outside of the WSL is a passing reference stating that they act as a pathway for players to the WSL. Ergo the only reason for their existence is to act as feeder clubs for WSL teams, not to exist as clubs in their own right. You may as well just call Southampton Saints and Portsmouth feeder clubs to Reading, while Coventry and Sporting Club Albion are feeder clubs to Aston Villa and Leeds and Sheffield being feeder clubs to Doncaster Belles and so on as that's basically what the situation will become. So the FA has turned women's football into an elitist, noninclusive, money-driven league where if you are not one of the 18 chosen ones, you're nothing, you exist only to serve as a feeder club to WSL teams. You're Reading B, Reading C, etc in all but name. Even men's football isn't that bad in comparison.
Well, we all know what F A stands for, don't we Lapras..... How are you getting on with the Pompey Ladies Facebook site now ? Are you still fully involved, after the "shabby" way you were treated ?
Indeed, indeed. Yeah, I'm still doing the Facebook page. Despite being shabbily treated, I do have that passion for Pompey Ladies (as I do with the men, although the Ladies generally upset me less often) so I am still passionate about helping raise their profile and awareness. The Facebook page is now nearly at 480 likes, not too shabby considering that's about a 4700% increase in a year. Also recently I've taken over their Twitter page two. Except for a couple of tweets over the weekend (the training photos, as I wasn't at the training session), I've posted nearly every update since the beginning of December. Now that I've taken it over, I'm doing a bit more in the way of following people (before they were quite stingy with their follows which I didn't think was helpful) and have gotten a few more followers that way. We just need about 700 more follows to become the 25th most followed women's football team in the entire country.
You know wht the solution is dont you? Break away from the FA and form a new set of league competitions in opposition. Since the FA have basically said they dont care about any teams outside of the WSL then those teams have no reason to stick with the FA or recognize the FA as their governing body and would be better off ditching them and going elsewhere. Problem there is you'd need a significant enough amount of the 100+ womens clubs in England not in the WSL to cooperate and all their players to agree not to switch to the WSL, but if it worked you'd rob the WSL of their pool of talent thus undermine the WSL from grounds roots up.
Great idea MAJR. There has been talk about setting up a WFA and I'm not sure if you're aware but there's a campaign called Save the WPL (http://www.saveourwpl.com/) which are on Twitter, Facebook and seem to have quite a deal of support among WPL clubs (Keynsham, Lewes, Newcastle, Preston North End, FC United, etc). Perhaps they should expand their campaign to campaign to save non-WSL football as a whole. VIVE LA REVOLUTION! DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?!
It'd be a problem of funding in the end though wouldn't it? The FA have got the money to throw around and do stupid things, I doubt an opposition league could produce even a fraction of it. My opinion is still that all these problems could be solved by simply allowing teams to be promoted to and relegated from the WSL.
Indeed. And if they want to ensure teams have the finances/infrastructure to cope with promotion to the WSL (they don't want clubs going bankrupt after all), then teams going for promotion should have to make an application for promotion around March time (therefore it'll be likely you'll get more bids than clubs promoted as who will go up may not be clear by this point, but teams will apply just in case) which is what I believe happens in the depths of non-league football. One of the arguments I've heard against relegation is that if a team is relegated, the loss of income is so great it'll lead to financial melt-down, however if they had promotion and relegation this could be solved in two ways: First increasing the income of the leagues below the WSL (and perhaps have parachute payments), second helping to ensure clubs are properly run whereby a relegation wouldn't be the end of the world as if relegation would be the end of the world, that would suggest the league is not the financially sustainable beast the FA like to claim. With the amount of spending that's going on, especially by clubs who either did not exist until this season (Notts County) or were in the third tier just a couple of seasons ago (Man City) it would suggest that actually the league is not sustainable and is being turned into the same mess as the Premier League (the men's that is). I never thought I'd say this, but through their 'governance' the FA have succeeded in making women's football even worse than men's football of the pitch.
And another thing that annoys me is the fact that WSL clubs can just cherry-pick the best players from the WPL (and below) for absolutely nothing. Not a single form of compensation is paid to the WPL club no matter who young, talented or how long the player has been with the club, so the WSL club can just choose whoever they like. In men's football, youth players who are out of contract will still consist of the original club getting compensation money, furthermore most non-league clubs are competing on a relatively even footing as there's not that much between them, therefore while your best players will be in demand, you don't have to worry about them being cherry-picked by much more financially better off teams. Clubs in the WSL get so much more financial support from the FA (30k per season from the FA for WSL1 clubs and 70k for WSL2 clubs, compared to about 1k for WPL clubs) that they can just scour the WPL for talent. Portsmouth have lost about four first team players since the summer who have been signed by various WSL clubs (mostly Reading and Yeovil), one of which had been at the club for 12 years, but did they get any compensation for any of them? Like **** did they. Just further shows that the clubs of the WPL and below exist only to serve as feeder clubs to the WSL and gain nothing in return!
There's a lot of anger on Twitter actually about this whole situation, it isn't difficult to find comments from all over the non-WSL footballing sphere, it's quite something. It reminds me of a certain film.... 'Ow do you do? My name's Lapras These are my players, here is my ground Not much to look at, nothing posh Nothing that you'd call up to scratch This is my club, my women's football side Here in the slums of the WPL We live on crumbs of minimal income Not good for stability but what the hell! Think you're poor? Think you've respect? Follow me! Follow me! Look down and show some mercy if you can Look down and see the clubs at your feet There was a time we formed a league We tried to change the world too fast Now we have got another league This one is no better than the last This is the land that thought for media coverage Now when we fight we fight to hold onto our players Here is the thing about equality Every club's equal when they're dead Take your place, take your chance Vive La Revolution! Vive La Revolution! Look down and show some mercy if you can Look down and see the clubs at your feet When's this gonna end? When we gonna live? Something's gotta happen now Something's gonna give It'll come, it'll come, it'll come It'll come, it'll come Where are the leaders of the FA? Where is the executive who runs this show? Only one organisation - Save Our WPL - speaks for the clubs here below The WPL is ill and fading fast Won't last the season so they say With all the anger in the land How long before the judgement day? Before we cut the fat ones down to size? Before the barricades arise? Look down and show so mercy if you can! Look down upon your fellow clubs!
