While the name is synonymous with longevity, Notts County’s presence at Wembley for Saturday’s women’s FA Cup final against Chelsea revives a discussion that has continued during these times of progress in women’s football. Notts County will celebrate their 153rd birthday this November, but the women’s arm of the club is only 18 months old and its change of incarnation – effectively moving from Lincoln to take up a place in the Women’s Super League last year – has raised questions about the collateral cost of advancement in the sport.
The facts that post-date their relocation, which saw Lincoln Ladies uprooted to Meadow Lane, are compelling. Notts County Ladies have been watched by higher crowds than anybody else in the Women’s Super League during the franchise’s first season and a half, their attendance record of 2,057 beaten only when Manchester City played Birmingham after the World Cup. Their squad contains five England players – including Laura Bassett – and they sit four points off the leaders, Sunderland, in an increasingly competitive top flight. More broadly, their integration with the men’s club, newly relegated to League Two, has set a standard for the sport in general.
“We’re not one of the bigger brands with multi-million pound facilities but what we’ve got is unique,” says Luke Negus-Hill, the chief executive of Notts County Ladies and chief operating officer of the men’s branch. “The women’s side is fully immersed in the club. The same facilities are available to both sides and it’s like that for the supporters. On a matchday you can have a VIP package, a pre-match meal, the same treatment you can receive at a men’s game. It’s about fan engagement and showing that this does not have to be known as a men’s football club.”
It is a model others envy, with the centrally-located Meadow Lane a far more accessible venue than many in the WSL and able to provide a stage that clubs with bigger reputations cannot. Notts County’s present-day methods draw no reproach but the manoeuvres that got them here caused bad blood in Lincoln where, until the move was announced in April 2013 as part of the club’s reapplication for a WSL place under revised criteria, there had been a feeling of upward mobility.
Lincoln had performed respectably in their three WSL seasons, had begun to use Lincoln City’s Sincil Bank stadium and could call on players such as the long-serving England defender Casey Stoney. In a relative outpost where top-level sport is concerned, the club had provided role models and built up a rapport with the community. The disillusionment at their uprooting was not confined to the fanbase. Stoney’s partner and former team-mate Megan Harris, who retired shortly afterwards, was among those for whom the new fit was uncomfortable.
“Megan had been part of the club for 17 years, since she was a small girl,” says Stoney, who joined Arsenal after the move. “I think one of the reasons she decided not to play on was that she was Lincoln through and through; she loved Lincoln and didn’t feel it was right for her.
“The city was very disappointed to lose the club – it was very successful. But there was excitement among the team about the new opportunity in Nottingham, and what it would bring in terms of full-time training and being linked to the oldest men’s league club.”
There was rancour, too, in Nottingham itself. Nottingham Forest Ladies, a second-tier club that had spent two seasons in the WSL’s predecessor, the Women’s Premier League, had applied for a WSL place in the belief they were the only club in their city to have done so. Having been beaten by a bidder they never knew existed in Notts County, they were forced to reorganise as a voluntary, grassroots organisation in the third tier.
“The Forest Ladies bid was a very good one, linked with the men’s club,” says the Nottingham Forest chairwoman, PJ Andrews. “A lot of it was linked around Nottingham, what the city could offer and what partnerships it could bring. We were not aware at any time that another Nottingham team would bid. It has been a dramatic change of identity for us since then, especially because the men’s club withdrew the level of support we’d previously had. Now we have to rely on a lot of goodwill from people, but we have 11 teams through the age groups, so we have adapted and are proud the work we have done.”
Time is a healer and wounds are salved, too, by evidence that the women’s game is developing. Notts County have been framed as an equivalent to MK Dons, who moved from Wimbledon in 2003, but perhaps it is not a fair comparison. While it would be a stretch to spin MK Dons’ creation as a necessary positive for the wider game, Notts County have been at the forefront of a group of clubs sketching a viable direction for a sport still working on an incomplete canvas and some would argue their creation has been a necessary wrench.
“We’ve had to move on,” Andrews says. “It was a bitter pill to swallow but, since then, all credit to Notts County. They’ve done an excellent job and have invested in women’s football so hats off to them. We encourage our young players to watch their top-flight games, and some of them have gone on to play there. It’s just sad we can’t offer them that pathway ourselves at the moment.”
Stoney agrees. “I think the decision has been absolutely justified,” she says. “You look at their attendances, the fanbase, everything they’ve done since they moved. Everything that has happened in the last couple of years has proved them right.”
Whether they are regarded as arrivistes or a gust of fresh air, Rick Passmoor and his Notts County team will breeze into Wembley confident of upsetting Chelsea. “Our aim has to be trophies,” Negus-Hill says. “Cup wins, league titles and bringing Champions League football to Meadow Lane. That has always been our ambition. We have a great ethos and this is what we’ve all worked so hard for.”
