Aroundtown Magazine July/August 2022

Aroundtown MEETS
“
We set the foundations
for where women in
football are at today.
I never envisioned we’d
still be around all these
years later.
”
yo-yoed in and out of the third tier of the
women’s football pyramid. Going into the
2022/23 season, the first team plays in the
premier division of the East Midlands Regional
Women’s Football League.
Val’s affinity with the club she established runs
deep, with some saying her loyalty hampered
her chances of taking her talent further. As
a left-footed player, quite rare in women’s
football, Val was a supremely talented player
and unstoppable in her prime. Had she been
afforded the opportunity, she could have played
for England.
“Rotherham is a small team and we never
played in an elite league so I was never spotted.
And I couldn’t ever leave a team I spent so much
time at. In the early days we played in the same
league as Doncaster Belles, but they went on to
be more successful. Over the years we’ve lost a
lot of players to bigger clubs who play at higher
levels but some past players have also gone on
to play in America and Finland.”
Women’s football today is a far cry from
Val’s day, where professional contracts weren’t
available and women had to balance several
jobs, and sometimes a family, while driving
around the country chasing a dream that didn’t
pay the bills. This new generation of female
players experience a completely different world,
with a focus on football education, academy
support, and talent development from an
early age.
“Most sports have moved on since the 1960s
but with football, the opportunities for girls are
vast. They can start playing for a school team at
eight or nine, and if they’re good enough there
should be no barriers to progression as there are
sports colleges and high performance centres.”
Val hung up her boots aged 41 after thirty
years but her devotion to the beautiful game
is clear to see. She then went into coaching
and management and is now the secretary of
Rotherham United Women which she juggles
alongside her full-time role as a care home
inspector with the CQC, having been in the care
sector since she was 18. Game days are still
as busy as when she was on the team sheet.
Her Sundays are spent doing virtually every job,
from standing on the gate to arranging matches
and sending match reports and paperwork to
the league.
She’s also in charge
of registering players each
season, with the current first team
and newly-formed reserve team amassing
over 50 women aged between 16 and 35, who
all pay towards each game which costs around
£265. They’re supported by Rotherham United
Community Sports Trust who help with kit and
sponsorship, but other than that they receive no
funding.
“Funding in women’s football is one of the
biggest issues we face. It costs us about
£15,000 a season to play which takes some
finding. Working women are not of the age to
do bag packing in supermarkets so we must
find different ways of fundraising. We’re always
looking for volunteers to help on match days or
fundraise for us.”
With the world’s eyes on women’s football
this summer as the UEFA Women’s EURO
highlights the accelerated growth of the sport,
and Rotherham playing its role as one of nine
host venues, Val is hopeful for the future of
women’s football.
“I hope the Women’s EURO does well as it’s
important for the profile of women’s football.
There’s still a big gulf between grassroots clubs
and elite teams in the Women’s Super League,
your clubs like Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool. But
the women’s game is growing enormously and
the only way to encourage kids similar aged to
what I was when I started to get involved is by
raising the profile.”
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