Pride of the Lionesses

Carrie Dunn

Description

The sequel to The Roar of the Lionesses - named one of The Guardian's best sports books of 2016. England's Lionesses headed to France for the 2019 Women's World Cup endeavouring to improve on their third-place finish in Canada four years previously. But they didn't have the easiest of preparations, with dramas and headlines emerging for all the wrong reasons. Back home, FA upheavals brought yet another restructure of competition in women's football. The top flights switched back to a winter season, and now all the elite teams had to employ players on a full-time professional basis. While the superstars went in search of spectacular silverware, the goalposts were being moved for pros, part-timers and amateurs alike. Even women playing football for fun were forced to consider their place in the system. Carrie Dunn's Pride of the Lionesses offers a timely inside analysis of one of the UK's fastest-growing sports. Is women's football in England actually growing from top to bottom - or is it just another slick PR campaign?

Sujets

• Inglaterra
• World Cup
• England

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 07 octobre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785316203
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2019
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Carrie Dunn, 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-541-1
eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-620-3
---
Ebook Conversion by www.eBookPartnership.com
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
PROLOGUE
1. A growing roar
2. 2017 and all that
AUTUMN
3. New beginnings
4. A full-time job
5. Belles are ringing
6. Queens of Orient
7. Following a dream
8. New ground
WINTER
9. The best-laid plans
10. Rising East
11. Changes
12. On the whistle
SPRING
13. Belief
14. Final countdowns
SUMMER
15. Fortune
16. Trophy hunt
17. The end
18. Four weeks in France
EPILOGUE
19. Waking up
20. Taking pride
DEDICATION
To Julian. Thank you for tiptoeing around the house when I m doing a phone interview, thank you for all the cups of coffee you make me when I m working, thank you for chauffeuring me round the country and accompanying me round the world in the name of research. You make everything wonderful.
Foreword
By Rachel Brown-Finnis Former England goalkeeper (82 caps) London 2012 Olympian for Team GB
IT HAS been great to see women s football in England move towards professionalisation - and when football clubs and other businesses are fully embracing the commercial potential of the game, the results can be spectacular, with the very best in the world now coming to our league and shining. With the England Lionesses now long established as one of the top international teams, this is a landmark time for our sport.
It s also important to remember those clubs and players further down the pyramid - who keep the sport running with nothing but sheer determination and love for the game fuelling them. I began my career with the help of many volunteers, including former international Sylvia Gore, whose story of a life in football featured in Carrie s previous book The Roar of the Lionesses . They deserve to have their stories told too.
Acknowledgements
THANK YOU so much to everyone who has spoken to me for this book, particularly those players, managers, coaches, officials and administrators who have allowed me to follow them over the course of a year; being welcomed into a changing room for a pre-match team talk is a huge honour and I do not take it lightly. Thank you especially to those who featured in The Roar of the Lionesses and were prepared to be part of another book, and a shout-out to Rebecca James, Arsenal communications manager and a former student of mine - endlessly helpful, and I couldn t be more proud of her. A shout-out too to Josh Chapman, press officer at Barnsley, for the photo that forms the back cover art.
Thank you to Julie Welch for the lovely quote on the front cover and to Kait Borsay for the endorsement on the back cover.
Thank you to Ruth Deller for letting me sleep on her sofa during those weekend trips to Yorkshire - always appreciated.
And thank you to everyone who has worked and continues to work to make women s football a success.
PROLOGUE
1
A growing roar
ONE FRIDAY in September 2016, I was woken up by the ping of an email. I had slept in later than usual; I had been out late the night before at an event to promote my recently released book The Roar of the Lionesses .
The email was from an editor I knew, asking me to write the obituary for Sylvia Gore.
It was not the way anyone would wish to learn about the death of someone they knew. I had been fortunate enough to speak to Sylvia when I was writing that book; she was assured of her place in history as the first official goalscorer for England once the FA had lifted the ban on women s football, but her career before and after that was just as fascinating. She loved to tell the tales of playing on terrible pitches not fit for purpose, and the lengths they would go to just to have a wash after a game - splashing on icy water from buckets, or jumping in a duck pond if they were playing in a park. She was generous with her time, and generous with the stories she was passing on as an oral tradition to the next generation; so few tangible documents of her playing career survived.
Or so I thought. Her next-of-kin spoke to me shortly after the funeral; Sylvia had kept plenty of mementoes of her life in football, and they were in a series of hefty boxes. There might not have been the years of match reports in newspapers that she deserved, but there were videos, there were trophies, and, yes, there were some press clippings. A local university now has all the items carefully catalogued and stored in an archive bearing Sylvia s name, there for the use of any historian of the women s game.
I had known that Sylvia was ill; when we had last spoken on the telephone, she had complained about the sciatica that continued to limit her mobility. By the time that she received the diagnosis that it was not sciatica that was causing her so much pain, it was too late; the next I heard from a mutual friend was that she was in a hospice. I am grateful that I was quick to write to her then, to thank her for talking to me, but also for being such a trailblazer for all future generations of footballers.
Her death made me realise once again how quickly we were losing so many decades of women s football history. The thousands of women who played football during the half-century-long ban in England got so little chance to tell their stories; and even after that, there were decades during which women and a small number of male allies were running their own game, with little help (or indeed money) from the governing bodies. As the nation s attention turned to France, where England would go into the 2019 Women s World Cup as one of the favourites to lift the trophy, I wanted to revisit the state of play in England - from the very top back down to grassroots, from modern day to the invisible histories.
Like The Roar of the Lionesses , The Pride of the Lionesses is not a comprehensive account of everything that happened in English women s football during the 2018/19 season; indeed, so much is happening so quickly it would be impossible to do. (The week after Roar was released, the FA announced a major change to their women s football fixture calendar. I was asked by a football writer if I regretted having such an early deadline, and I said that I did not - the game remains in so much flux that there is a significant piece of news almost every week and no deadline could ever include them all.) Rather, this book provides a series of snapshots of the people and clubs at all levels of the game, showing the challenges they face, the targets for which they aim, and their ultimate achievements. Some of the players, coaches, officials and teams featured in Roar also feature here; there are also always new stories to tell.
2
2017 and all that
ENGLAND S QUEST for a major title continued. They had gone into 2017 s European Championships with high expectations; after all, of all the European teams in the 2015 World Cup, they had progressed the furthest. When former winners Norway crashed out in the group stages - without a single point or a goal - followed quickly by reigning champions Germany in the quarter-finals, the path looked almost clear. More than that, the Lionesses had enjoyed a comfortable cruise to the top of Group D, thrashing Scotland 6-0, beating Spain 2-0, and then defeating Portugal 2-1. A Jodie Taylor goal on the hour was enough to beat France in the quarter-final, setting up a clash with hosts Netherlands in the semi-final.
Going in as overwhelming favourites, it may have crossed a few minds that the result was a formality. Yet it was the Netherlands who produced a wonderful display leading to a crushing result - 3-0, with goals from Arsenal duo Vivianne Miedema and Danielle van de Donk, topped off with a Millie Bright own goal. It was another semi-final defeat at a major tournament, but this one stung more because of the heightened hopes.
Two months later, the qualification campaign for the 2019 Women s World Cup began. Once more England began in fine style, notching up six goals against Russia at Tranmere s Prenton Park, courtesy of Nikita Parris, Jodie Taylor, Jordan Nobbs, Lucy Bronze and a brace from Toni Duggan. The day after that victory, the news broke that Mark Sampson had left his position as England coach after a protracted and messy situation in which striker Eniola Aluko accused him of racism, although this was not enough to force him out of the hot seat; only the revelation that he had been subject to a disciplinary recommendation at his former club for an inappropriate relationship with a player ended his tenure.
Yet, despite the senior team s comparative success in recent years, there was no line of candidates beating the FA s door down to take on the vacant role. The most likely successors indicated that they had no interest in the position, not keen to assume a job where they had little control over the topto-bottom talent pathway, nor where their personal lives would become a matter of more public interest. Indeed, the FA themselves indicated that the acting manager Mo Marley had long decided she was not interested in taking the job on permanently. A former England international and Everton legend, Marley had had success with Everton domestically and with