Wolves Women Thread

[Law's Bus]

After three years of painful missing out, after only one defeat in almost 1000 days, Wolves Women finally won a league title today - the National League Northern Division.

It's worth taking a quick look at this point over the previous three seasons:
In 2018-19, they missed out on promotion from Tier 4 to the Albion by a couple of points.
In 2019-20, they were just a couple of points away from winning Tier 4, and the season was summarily cancelled.
In 2020-21, they won all nine games and were miles clear at the top of Tier 4 already before the season was just curtailed. They then had to beg to be granted promotion to Tier 3, which they received.

However, utterly ridiculously winning the league doesn't guarantee promotion to the Women's Championship - there's a play-off to come against whoever wins the Southern Division, with only the winner of that being promoted.

Though as a reward they get to play their next league game at Molineux on Wednesday night, which will be good.

 

[Law's Bus]

Best part of today's match (apart from the trophy presentation, clearly...) has to be this though:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1513160750877089794

 

[Wolf Hunting]

Thanks for posting that Mr Bus! I'm kind of interested in women's football and often wonder without ever referring to Google where they are in relation to the more common teams you read about on a daily basis.
I've seen clips on Youtube and they seem way better than 4th tier.

 

[Jack Regan]

Yeah they've been horribly robbed of the title the last couple of years by covid so good to see. The WSL is very much a closed shop though (and mostly very uncompetitive) so they'll do very well to ever make it there.

 

[sycophantia]

Footballs organisers are woeful, its crazy that there's only one team promoted/relegated, no idea why both Northern and Southern divisions don't get promoted.

 

[Law's Bus]

Thanks for posting that Mr Bus! I'm kind of interested in women's football and often wonder without ever referring to Google where they are in relation to the more common teams you read about on a daily basis.
I've seen clips on Youtube and they seem way better than 4th tier.

Well, they've just won Tier 3, the equivalent of League One. But women's leagues are smaller than men's leagues (generally 12 teams), so in terms of relating it to men's leagues, they're upper mid-Championship.

 

[Paul]

Won a league title in front of a crowd of less than 700 people, talk about doing something for the love of it !

 

[Deano]

Started taking notice more since my cousin started playing for them. Couldn't believe that winning the league doesn't even guarantee promotion.

 

[big mean bunny]

Yeah it's crap that promotion stuff. I try to watch there stuff and highlights where ever I can and they look miles better than the standard of opposition. Yesterday was there biggest crowd though from what I read on the athletic.

The Southern league looks like its down to Southampton or Ipswich, although Oxford are only 6 points back too. Hopefully they will put that playoff on Wolves YouTube, although games might already be on there and I have been missing them! I always miss the u23s kickoffs until someone starts talking about them in the thread.

 

[Tyrannosaurus Dan]

What a load of absolute bollocks that they could still miss out on promotion.

 

[BillyDee]

It's all a bit shit, particularly when some teams missed out in the reshuffle that saw Man Utd go straight to the top.

 

[Law's Bus]

Yeah it's crap that promotion stuff. I try to watch there stuff and highlights where ever I can and they look miles better than the standard of opposition. Yesterday was there biggest crowd though from what I read on the athletic.

They are definitely miles better than some of the other sides, and you can really tell that they now have full use of Compton Park and all its facilities as their fitness levels are massively superior to most other sides. Quite a change from a couple of years ago when they were still paying subs.

There are some really good players in the side - Tammi George is probably the standout player, but Amber Hughes is a great poacher, Maz Gauntlett (now she's (mostly) back match fit from serious knee ligament damage) tries all sorts of things that you don't expect at this level, and Anna Morphet is a really good taker of set-pieces, which is unusual for a centre-half to say the least.

Whilst some comments about the general standards are fair enough - particularly the average standard of opposition goalkeeping; it's worth remembering that we're talking about players who all hold down full-time "real" jobs and so only train two evenings a week, and have only had the facilities available to them in the last two years that men's footballers have had basically their entire lives for five full days a week.

As for the attendance, if the Athletic are saying that then Timbo's wrong - the largest crowd of the season was for the home game against WBA which was over 700. Which is better than some men's National League north/south teams.

One thing that will have to change (and not for the better) if they get promoted is that they'll almost certainly have to move from their current ground of the CKW Stadium in Castlecroft, which is on the site of the old training ground. There's a bunch of grounds requirements in the Women's Championship which the CKW doesn't meet; and basically neither does anywhere else in or around Wolverhampton other than Molineux, which is both far too large and logistically impossible to share even if it wasn't with Sky moving men's team matches around. Best guesses are that they'll either end up in Telford or Kidderminster, which would be a real shame after all the effort they've gone into making sure that they're homed within the city to help folk attend. There have been rumours of the club building a small stadium somewhere in or around Wolverhampton to house Wolves Women and the U23s, but that's a long term project if it is indeed on their radar. I suppose they could actually buy an existing ground like Bilston Town's, but finding somewhere that exists that could be fitted with the right facilities, and having a decent amount of car parking nearby would be challenging. And of course, the Premier League club turfing out a small amateur club from their home would play terribly in the press.

 

[sycophantia]

I'd probably get to the odd game if they go to the Bucks Head

 

[Tony Towner]

Wouldn't they go back to Hednesford? Closer to Wolverhampton than the other options mentioned and used to be where they played

 

[Law's Bus]

Wouldn't they go back to Hednesford? Closer to Wolverhampton than the other options mentioned and used to be where they played

Possibly - the ground requirements for the Women's Championship are similar to that of men's Grade D which is the minimum for Step 4 (Tier 8), but with additional requirements for things like TV and press facilities, and doping control (!). I assume Hednesford have those from their Conference days?

One thing to bear in mind about Hednesford is that it's also probably more of a PITA to reach from Wolverhampton than the other two, given you've got to fight your way through Cannock to get there.

 

[Law's Bus]

Next match for Wolves Women is against Brighouse Town tonight at Molineux, so if you've got no plans for the evening, why not support a different part of the club? It would be great to get the divisional highest attendance.

Free entry to STH and members, £5 adults, £2 for U21 or over 65, £1 for U17.

If you are a STH or member though, you do need to book your seat via the ticketing website - you can't just wander up on spec.

 

[Law's Bus]

Final result was 2-2, but Wolves were 2-0 up with 5 minutes to go. Fair result at the end of the day though, as Wolves Women were not at their best. Scorers were OG (after about a minute!) and Maz Gauntlett.

Attendance was just under 2.5k which is pretty impressive stuff - there were very few seats still left available.

It's also been announced today that the manager Dan McNamara will have to miss the end of the season, including the play-off final and the County Cup final because he's being shipped out by the RAF (as that's his day job) for the next four months. You have to feel for him with that, but as we keep saying, the problem with women's football at this level is that the day jobs have to come first.

 

[Law's Bus]

Tickets for the County Cup Final against the Albion at Bescot on Wednesday 11 May, 7.30pm have now gone on sale:

https://www.birminghamfa.com/news/2022/apr/22/womens-county-cup-final-tickets-on-sale

There's no men's team game scheduled for that day, which should help with the attendance.

 

[Law's Bus]

Final league game of the season for Wolves Women this afternoon against Loughborough down at the CKW Stadium in Castlecroft.

Kick-off is 2pm, £4 adults, £2 concessions, STH free.

 

[Law's Bus]

After the utter shambles that was the men's game yesterday, it was a delight to watch a Wolves first team play well, and care about playing well - with the right substitutions at the right time, which was nice to see.


Anyway, the game (and the league season) ended 4-0 with goals from Amber Hughes (x2), Maz Gauntlett and Beth Merrick. That means that the team finished 8 points clear at the top of the division. Oh, and a +45 goal difference from 24 games.

Only two games remaning are the County Cup Final against WBA on the 11th at the soon to be Poundland Stadium in Walsall; and the ridiculous promotion play-off game against Southampton on 21st at Stockport County.