Women’s football: after the World Cup, what next?

For the first time ever the FA Women’s cup final will take place at Wembley Stadium on 1 August. Some 10,000 tickets have already been sold for the match which will see Chelsea Ladies take on Notts County.

It’s a measure of the massive increase in public interest in the women’s game following the historic success at the recent World Cup in Canada where England’s Lionesses came third, pushing England up to 5th place in the FIFA rankings.

Bumper crowd

And there’s a knock-on effect at club level too. As the Women’s Super League (WSL) recommenced last weekend after its summer break, Chelsea Ladies drew a bumper crowd of 1,233 at their match against Bristol Academy in Staines on Sunday.

Chelsea manager Emma Hayes said “It’s definitely progress for women’s football. We’re not going to go from 500 fans to 50,000 fans overnight but it’s great to see attendances up across the league this weekend. Players like to play in front of a crowd and it makes a big difference.”

Arsenal Ladies also saw 2,000 fans attend their fixture against Liverpool at Meadow Park in Boreham Wood on Sunday – more than twice the typical gate of 800 in the past. Arsenal Ladies manager Pedro Martinez Losa said: “This has given us an indication of how people are going to be involved in the game.”

While those numbers remain small in comparison with Premier League fixtures, when did you last see every player walk along the hoarding at the end of the match signing autographs?

Money

And money, as ever, is the main point of difference with the men’s game. Not just the fact that if they are paid at all, women players often get in a year what their male counterparts can earn in a week. Ticket prices are also considerably more spectator-friendly.

Fans can pre-book tickets to see Arsenal Ladies for a mere £5, or pay £6 on the gate. Tickets for the Women’s Cup Final are £15 for adults and £5 for children.

Following the World Cup media blitz, families are bringing girls to matches to put names to faces. Fixtures where they can see players with World Cup medals. But can the momentum be maintained?

In June the FA announced a four-year deal with utility company SSE to sponsor the Women’s FA Cup. The seven-figure deal will also mean “significant” funding for a “country-wide programme of girls-only football”. This summer the FA is staging girls-only sessions as part of its skills programme.

The introduction of the WSL in 2011 made elite matches less one-sided and more exicting to watch. The FA reckons that 2.89m women and girls play football in England.

Kelly Simmons, director of women’s football at the FA, told Channel 4 News “county football associations have been inundated with schools wanting to do girls football, and clubs wanting to start a women’s section.”

When girls try playing football “it becomes their favourite sport” said Ms Simmons, who is keen to tackle the fact that dads are less likely to encourage daughters to play football than sons.

Olympics

Not everything is going smoothly.

A major opportunity to grab media coverage for the sport was lost when the Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish and English football authorities failed to resolve the issue of how to enter a GB team into the Olympics without undermining the right of each nation to compete separately within Fifa tournaments.

“it’s a bit of a disaster that we’re not going to have an Olympics team,” England player Casey Stoney told the Guardian, echoing former sports minister Lord Moynihan who told the Independent: “For all sorts of reasons this is a major backwards step not to send a women’s team to Rio. Firstly, they have got a real medal chance. Secondly, we need to build on the success of the women’s game and the Olympics is the pinnacle for the women’s game.

Kelly Simmons agrees. telling Channel 4 News: “when you are trying to build a sport you want as many pinnacle moments as possible.”

But women’s football is used to tackling hard challenges. Arsenal Ladies manager Pedro Martinez Losa insists: “It’s not just about following the players now, we have to make the fans follow the clubs and this league, which is very attractive.”

And with qualifying for the 2017 Women’s European Championships in Holland starting this autumn, there’s everything to play for.

Returning England football heroes Lucy Bronze, Laura Bassett and Claire Rafferty on the game they love, that FA tweet and the pay disparity with male players: