Read what Ben Clasper had to say in his programme notes ahead of our women's first home game of the season

On behalf of the club I’d like to welcome you back to Champion Hill for the first home league fixture of the 2022 23 season for the women’s team in what we expect to be an extremely competitive division with some strong familiar faces plus the addition of new teams and compared with past seasons when the pre-season consensus formed around one or two clear favourites I think there are more teams than ever this year expecting to compete for the promotion spot.

Those of you who have followed us in past seasons will know fixtures are published in two halves and so as we kick off today we only know what the first half of the season will look like and it is a rather frustrating outlook having been only given two home fixtures in our first nine league games which will make it harder to get that Champion Hill momentum going but at least today we are back together and looking forward to seeing the team in competitive action here for the first time since April.

It goes without saying that the most eventful moment of the summer was England wining the Euros and it was great to see the interest and excitement generated along the way, demand to watch games at our own club was high and it was particularly encouraging that it wasn’t just the final that was popular and it wasn’t even just England bringing in the fans. Whilst the excitement of the moment delivers a great short term high I think it is also important to recognise that summer international tournaments are one offs and the real work goes on week in, week out. This country, more than most in my experience, has a tendency to get hugely overexcited with sporting success but has a less admirable track record in converting those spikes into longer term support and participation, I am old enough to recall numerous sports, Hockey, Rugby Union, Rowing, Cricket etc each having their moment in the spotlight after standout moments on an international stage but all are now suffering badly from declining numbers. I hope women’s football is different and I think there are enough signs to believe that will be the case, it was already on an upward trend, broadcasters are increasing the screen time for women covering the sport in general not just the women’s game and crowds are still heading in the right direction.

It is also interesting to see the differences within the women’s game in whether the men’s and women’s teams at the same club should have different identities or be clearly part of one combined club and I think that will be a key factor in how the game and the leagues evolve. This is still an area we are working on to find the best approach. This season we took the decision to offer season tickets for the women’s matches only for the first time. We debated whether to keep the ‘club’ season ticket which always provided access to both men’s and women’s games or whether to switch it to a men’s game only ticket but it was clear when we released season tickets that still having access to the women’s games was an important issue for many people which I hope means we are offering the best of both worlds.

We also hope our changes behind the scenes in the summer will deliver improvements for our players, coaches and fans of all teams as we welcomed back Tom Bale into the media role on a full time basis and Tom has already started the work of making sure we have full coverage in terms of news, commentary and footage for all men’s and women’s first team matches and we hope to extend that to cover the reserves, B teams and youth teams. We have also welcomed on to the club board our new director of football, Dumebi Dumaka, a former player and someone we hope will be able to provide better support to the management and players by being dedicated to matters ‘on the pitch’. Lastly, specific to the women’s team, we were sorry to see our secretary Sue Plain depart in the summer due to planning to move away from the area but are pleased to welcome Jatin Guntupalli into the role and hopefully build on the foundations set by Sue.

We are always looking for ways to improve the way the club is run so we can play our part in the growth of sporting provision whether that is participation or support and women’s football has never been in a better position in recent history, let’s hope that continues.