When Willie Kirk’s Everton side step out on to the Goodison Park turf on Sunday there will be a feeling that things have come symbolically full circle. It was 100 years ago that a record that would last 99 years would be set at the ground. On Boxing Day 1920 a staggering 53,000 fans, with a further 14,000 reported to be turned away, filed through the turnstiles to watch the premier women’s team of the time, the munitions factory team Dick, Kerr Ladies, beat St Helens Ladies 4-0 and raised £3,115 (about £140,000 today) for charity.
The record for a women’s club game stood until last year, when 60,739 filled the Wanda Metropolitano for Atlético Madrid’s defeat by Barcelona.
Dick, Kerr Ladies had been attracting tens of thousands of spectators in the years preceding their Goodison Park peak but the potential for further growth was scythed down by the FA’s 50-year ban on women’s football being played in its affiliated grounds introduced the following year.
Everton’s first Women’s Super League game at Goodison will not match those numbers but should they top the 20,000 they are hoping for, they will become the sixth English club to have done so this season – with Tottenham having climbed closest to the 1920 tally with their 38,262 fans at their new stadium for their first WSL derby against Arsenal in November. Slowly the damage done by the exiling of the women’s game is being undone.
“It’s going to be a huge occasion,” says Kirk thoughtfully. “Everyone at the club, the staff, the players, have been really excited about it, to be honest, ever since we knew it was a possibility and the club were working to make it happen.
“I’m hoping it’s going to be over 20,000. That would be fantastic. The club have made a real conscious effort to push the game, we’ve got a lot of signage in the city centre and there’s a lot going out on social media.”
If the incentive of doing the double over Liverpool was not enough, with Lucy Graham’s long-range effort the difference in the reverse fixture, they also have the added ambition of attempting to top the 23,500 watching that game at Anfield. “The intensity in training has been very good because everyone is desperate to be playing,” says the 41-year-old. “It’s a rivalry. It matters. If it’s tiddlywinks, under-10s football, beating a crowd, that rivalry always means that you want to win. It’s good because it incentivises the club to make it work properly.”
Kirk’s turnaround of Everton has been incredibly impressive. When the manager swapped his six-month stint as Casey Stoney’s number two at Manchester United for Finch Farm the team had only one win, in the Continental League Cup. By the end of the season they had three, including two against Liverpool, to finish second bottom as Kirk plotted his rebuild. Eighteen months on from his trip along the M62 Everton are fifth, just a point behind Manchester United as they fight it out to be the best-of-the-rest behind Manchester City, Chelsea and Arsenal.
“When we got to the summer we said our target was top half. We felt it was slightly ambitious at the time but we’ve got a really good group of players, so I’m not surprised,” says Kirk, who has not been turned down by the club in any request he has made since joining, be it transfers or working practices.
“I don’t think it will be until next season that you really see the Everton that we want to see. We’ve still got inconsistencies, we’re still trying to develop the players, we’re still trying to really entrain our philosophies and we’ve got plans for the transfer window in the summer to further improve the squad. This season, hopefully by the end of it, will be one that can be deemed successful but that can be further improved.”
This season their form has been erratic but they have already doubled their win tally. “We won three league games on the bounce,” says Kirk with a smile. “I only know that because I’ve agreed to take the players for pizza when we win three in a row. We did it once. I thought we were at the start of a run of games but the inconsistencies are there.
“That’s the next thing for us. Rack up three wins again and then after that it’s about taking points off the top three. I feel like over 90 minutes we can challenge any team; over the course of a season it is a completely different matter but we need to start taking points off the top three, the top four.”
Their Goodison adventure could not come at a better time. Already the team have had two games postponed, one at their home ground in Southport. There have been seven WSL games pushed back so far. Everton are waiting to move to Walton Hall Park. “At the start of the season we thought we’d be in there by now. It’s been delayed for a number of reasons,” says Kirk. “A lot of them out of our control, but that’s very close now.”
But this period of turf trouble has put the quick professionalisation of the league in context. “I think this has been the worst season since they changed it back to a winter league; it’s not ideal,” says Kirk. “But it’s a nice little reality check for us, of where the women’s game is and where we still need to improve. We’re talking about VAR and goalline technology but let’s get the pitches up to spec first.”
