The Great Hall at Wembley Stadium is full of the best of the Women’s Super League. They are mooching around, waiting to pass from one camera set-up to the next. Dressed in full kit they will pose for pictures, conduct interviews and record those odd video snippets that illustrate the lineups on TV. It is busy but also expectant, like being backstage before the start of the headline act.
The Super League begins on Friday with an air of expectation. A new calendar, known as the winter season, will be the first in sync with its male equivalent till May. The 10 clubs in the top division, WSL 1, will compete for the title and Champions League qualification, as well as to avoid relegation. Players have been recruited from Europe and they will join home nations players better known by the public than any of their predecessors. More than four million watched England’s European Championship semi-final against Holland. There is the hope, but also the pressure, of bringing more of that attention to the domestic game.
Steph Houghton, the England and Manchester City captain, lifted the WSL1 trophy in its last summer season. She raised the Continental Cup and FA Women’s Cup to boot, for a clean sweep of domestic titles. She accepts her challenge is not just on the pitch but to get more people to watch her play; on TV, but more importantly in the stadium.
“For four million people to watch us against Holland was fantastic news,” she says. “You’re in a bit of a bubble when you’re at the Euros. Then you get back and speak to people you’ve never met before and they say: ‘Well done. We stayed up and watched you.’ I usually say: ‘Well, come and watch us in person, it’s a bit different.’ Over the past few years, especially at City, the crowds have increased. People come and then they bring friends who bring their friends.
“The technical ability of the girls, how much they love the game and really wear their hearts on their sleeves, that’s quite refreshing for a lot of people. The aim of the WSL has always been to try to get better every single year, whether that’s the standard, the people coming to watch us, or the consistency of fixtures, which we probably missed out on the last few years. I’m really excited about the new season.”
City Women played in front of an average crowd of 2,249 last season. The team’s needs are fully met by the lavish facilities of Manchester’s Etihad Campus. Houghton reflects on how far removed it is from her roots as a Sunderland youth player – “my dad had to pay subs for us and I used to get hand-me-down kits. I’d never have imagined the life that I live now” – but such a disparity remains between the haves and the have-nots in the WSL.
The average league attendance in 2016 was 1,128 and three clubs had their crowds shrink. Four clubs are fully professional: City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool. New plans from the FA aim to create an entirely professional division by this time next year. It will be another step change and one that will be beyond some clubs and put undue strain on the finances of others.
Even Arsenal are feeling status envy with the rise of City and Chelsea. Arsenal, perennial Cup winners when it was the most prestigious tournament in the women’s game, have fallen back in the WSL era. The manager, Pedro Martínez Losa, has looked to rectify this in the summer, signing Vivianne Miedema, who scored against England in the semi-final and twice in the final at the Euros for Holland, to play up front alongside the Golden Boot winner, Jodie Taylor.
In defence they have added Sweden’s Jessica Samuelsson and re-signed the German centre-half Josephine Henning from Lyon. In the middle will be the enduring figure of Jordan Nobbs, her dynamism made her one of England’s outstanding players this summer.
“I’m lucky enough to have been in a successful Arsenal team and third is disappointing for us,” she says. “We want to be winning trophies this year and we need to be winning them, so we’ve also brought winners into our squad. Our frontline is frightening so Pedro has got a tough ask of fitting them all in. At the moment our competitive side is definitely at its fullest. Hopefully, that’s going to help with our performance.”
Nobbs, like Houghton, has hopes for the broader success of the women’s game but she retains perspective about the size of the challenge in transforming it from a minor sport to one that can maintain the attention of the mainstream.
“It’s the responsibility of us as players, our clubs and the media,” she says. “The more we get them working together, pushing our games, showing our games, being good role models. We all need to encourage that. The more the media can push our game, and push us in a good light, then it’s going to be better for us.
“To be honest if I look back seven years I would never have said we’d be where we are today. So it’s a tough ask but I’ve learned that anything can happen.”
