When Southampton FC Women asked Marieanne Spacey-Cale to manage their nascent team in 2018 the 91-cap former England international faced a tough decision.
She was on the FA coaching staff, running the U23s, and had been assistant manager as England came third at the 2015 Women’s World Cup. And unless you’re picking the first XI, FA coaching jobs have good security.
Southampton, meanwhile, having failed in an application to join the second-tier Championship, were about to compete three levels lower having won the Hampshire League in their debut season.
Although the city has a strong women’s football heritage, the unrelated Southampton Women’s FC winning eight FA Cups from 1971-81, this was a new venture, Saints having axed support to another women’s club after relegation from the men’s Premier League in 2005.
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“It was a big decision to move, but the right one,” says Spacey-Cale, speaking at Saints’ Testwood complex, where both genders train and the women play their matches. “People might see it as a step down, but sometimes you’ve got to move sideways to go forward again.”
Saints are certainly heading in the right direction, winning two more promotions, the second via “upward movement” after Covid-19 twice brought a premature end to the season with Southampton top.
Another title has followed, Saints winning the National League South last month by beating Portsmouth in front of 5,145 people at St Mary’s. Satisfying as that was, the job is not done; they need to win a play-off at Stockport County’s Edgeley Park on Saturday to gain promotion to the Championship.
Wolverhampton Wanderers, winners of the northern division, are the opposition. A much older club, dating back to 1975, they are also seeking a second successive promotion after “upward movement”.
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Both illustrate a new focus on women’s teams as more men’s club executives recognise the sport’s rapid growth. Other ambitious outfits at this level are Ipswich, who have had two good FA Cup runs, Oxford, Derby and Burnley, who this week appointed Jonathan Morgan, the manager who took Leicester into the WSL.
A tier below Newcastle’s co-owner Amanda Staveley has spoken of being in the Champions League in five years, which will taking some doing, even with Saudi cash. “Sportwashing” or not, the fact 22,134 watched “the lasses” at St James’s Park earlier this month highlights the potential.
The danger is of a bottleneck developing unless the FA accelerate the expansion of the WSL and Championship, currently at 12 clubs each, and introduce more promotion/relegation places.
“We need to recognise that the game is growing and more clubs are heavily resourced and capable of playing at the next level,” said Spacey-Cale.
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Clubs need to be ready though. “If we’ve got into the Championship in 2017, we probably wouldn’t have been as prepared as we could have been, and should have been,” she admits. “Now we’ve got a really strong infrastructure. We got nine full-time staff, in all the right areas – coaches, medical, physio, analysts, sports therapists.”
Going up would probably mean going full-time, possibly for next season. That could mean losing experienced pros like Leeta Rutherford, players who dropped down in part to maintain off-field careers.
But Spacey-Cale’s actual title is Head of Girls and Women’s Technical Department, and she’s enthused by the quality of young players coming through, supplemented by those like Northern Ireland’s Laura Rafferty, who grew up at the club but had to leave as there was no adult team.
First, they have to get past Wolves. “There is a lot riding on it,” said Spacey-Cale. “It’s a pivotal moment”.
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