Wednesday, June 27
FA Fiddle While Charlton Burns

Last week saw the shocking news leak out that Charlton Athletic FC are due to abandon their highly successful ladies team after dropping out of the Premier League.

While this news is shocking it is hardly surprising. Money is everything in football these days. Nothing else matters. Absolutely nothing else.

Charlton have decided that the £300,000 needed to fund the womens team each year is too big a burden to carry having fallen off the Premier League gravy train.

It would be wrong to dispute Charlton's decision. After all, why should they fund the womens' game when most of their competitors can't be bothered?

Even Manchester United withdrew their backing from the womens team carrying their name a few years ago.

The disappointing thing about this case, however, is that Charlton were not just supporting a team, they had built a superb infrastructure to support and develop the game at youth and senior level.

They were represented by a fine, talented, highly entertaining young side and they had every right to be proud of what they had achieved over the past seven years.

They had built something which should have kept them at the forefront of what is, according to their own website, the fastest growing sport in the country.

The one thing womens' football patently isn't, however, is a money spinning venture so all the previous investment and hard work can be thrown away in one fell swoop the moment the club drops out of the Premier League.

I really don't get the massive appeal of the Premier League to teams like Charlton, or anybody else for that matter.

Sure you get loads of money but what happens to that money?

It ends up in the pockets of people like Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink and their agents.

The tv money has doubled this year so what happens? Transfer fees rocket and wages rocket.

In the end there is no real difference except to the bank balances of a few footballers and their hangers on.

Charlton were perhaps the club most interested in making a difference to the community with the riches they had at their disposal and while that was commendable what was the point if these are the things that are going to suffer when their overall income is reduced?

I don't blame Charlton for their decision but it is simply that they had been such a positive force in the womens' game that the news is so disappointing.

The clubs' website stresses that they are still involved in trying to find a sponsor to allow them to keep the side going and we can only hope that they are successful.

They will need to act fast, however, as two players have already found another club and more are sure to follow if the uncertainty continues.

One website where there is nothing to be found about the situation at Charlton is the FA's own site.

The FA is the body responsible for womens' football yet the news that the second biggest club in the country is on the verge of closing doesn't warrant a mention.

It should surprise nobody that the wonderful people at the FA only choose to carry news of a positive nature which allows them to maintain the image of prosperity and growth.

They would have been great during the war. If they had been in charge of propaganda nobody would have even realised it was going on.

It could be that they are embarrassed about the situation. All that money in the game as a whole and yet even the club perhaps most committed to the womens' game is about to fold.

If they keep quiet, however, the problem might just sort itself out or perhaps nobody will notice.

It is time the FA used their position of immense privilege and power to do some lasting good for a game that is its' responsibility.

After all, they will be crowing if England have a good World Cup.

It is pathetic that they haven't tied in womens' football with their other packages when it comes to negotiating television deals and basically forced broadcasters to put it on their channels.

I would suggest they might also want to look at the league structure that is in place at the moment. At present neither television nor sponsors seem particularly interested in the format, or if you prefer, the product.

Perhaps splitting the country into four regional sections with a play off system then in place to decide the champions at the end of it would be more attractive.

This would reduce costs and surely play off fixtures at least could be sold to tv.

This might not strike you as a great idea but I did just come up with it off the top of my head as I was writing this.

I'm not paid thousands of pounds a week by the FA to protect and promote womens' football.

Maybe somebody within that institution has the time and imagination to come up with something better and actually manage to do something about the crisis at the top level of the womens' game.

Thursday, June 28
The FA; True Champions Of Womens' Football

Having no sooner told you that the one place you wouldn't find any comment about the plight of Charlton Athletic WFC is the FA's own website than, lo and behold, there appears an article of immense self justification detailing that bodies' overwhelming commitment to the womens' game.

It's easy to be flippant at the FA's expense and there is no doubt that they have done the womens' game much good (since renouncing their own decision to ban the sport) but the fact remains that at the top level the game is fighting for survival and that, no matter how much work, support and commitment has gone into the game at grassroots level, it is actually at the other end of the spectrum that attention and action is desperately needed.

The article on the FA's site is interesting in many ways.

Firstly it provides a detailed breakdown of the money put into the game at the top level in way of prize money and support for centres of excellence.

It would appear that Arsenal Ladies earned less than £20,000 for completing a domestic treble last season. What would a team get in the mens' game for doing the same?

In the week when the tennis started at Wimbledon this shows just how lowly womens' football is considered in this country.

The women get paid the same as the men at Wimbledon even though they wouldn't be able to beat the men if they had to play them one on one. They don't even play the same number of games but they are considered as equals.

In football, even though the women play exactly the same length of game (once again they would not beat the men but they put in the same shift), the players basically aren't paid at all and their clubs receive next to nothing for their achievements.

The article says that a review of the league structure is underway. Let's hope some benefit comes of this before any more teams are faced with closure.

Much of the article is filled with convenient phrases which sound impressive but don't necessarily mean that much.

The FA point to an ill fated professional league set up in the States after the successful 1999 World Cup there and say that "Lessons such as those are vital to learn from, so that the same mistakes are not replicated in the next stage of development of the elite game in England."

Okay, what were those lessons and what have you learned? That World Cup was eight years ago. If anything that just sounds like an excuse. When exactly is the next stage of development of the elite game in England going to take place?

What is that stage?

The article also claims that womens' football "has made tremendous forward strides in the last fourteen years since The FA took on its development."

Has it? It is at a stage where the second biggest and most succesful club cannot continue to function.

The article also introduces us to Rachel Pavlou, the FA's Head of Women's Football, which is nice. The only other mention of her I could find on the sites' archive is during a trip to Botswana to help the development of the game out there.

Maybe that's the next stage of development for the elite game in England. Fill it full of foreigners. After all, it's worked in the mens' game.

Pavlou does rate many more mentions in her previous role within the Birmingham FA, which is quite telling really.

The FA love their regional, community type intiatives. The grassroots. That is were they can genuinely point to success stories and quantify the "tremendous strides forward" made.

This is all well and good but the simple truth about "grassroots football" is that the clue is in the title.

All you have ever really needed for the game to thrive at that level is some grass and a football. All girls ever needed to make football a success at that level was the encouragement and assurace that football is an acceptable game for them to play.

Now that this assurance is becoming more and more widespread they can get on with playing and enjoying the game as never before.

Centres of excellence and qualified coaches are all well and good but as long as youngsters are allowed to play at all then talent will always shine through.

What our young girls, and the future generations, really need is a thriving game at the top level.

You wouldn't need to spend money at grassroots trying to encourage girls to take up football if Kelly Smith earned as much money for playing the game as David Beckham does or if Arsenal Ladies were on the tele as much as the Arsenal men.

Girls would be killing themselves for the opportunity. Even now they are flocking to the game in record numbers even though there is no prospect of them being able to make a living out of the game and, quite the opposite, one of the really big, glamorous names in the game looks set for the morgue.

As it stands at the moment any girl who is really talented at sport would be well advised to enjoy a kick about in the park with her mates but put all her real energies into becoming a Wimbledon champion.

Much crappier game but far much more money to be made out of it.