Surprise, Women’s football still has a long way to go

Having had last weekend off for the international break I couldn’t wait till this weekend to go back to a game, so I looked online for a midweek game that would be easy to get too.
The game I found was Liverpool FC Women vs Aston Villa Women in the Women’s Continental League Cup just half an hour’s bus ride from me at Tranmere Rover’s Prenton Park ground on the Wirral. Even better for me was that as a Liverpool Member I found out that I can get free tickets to their Women’s games, I believe tickets are £6.50 for most fans. Add to that the fact that these two teams went opposite ways in the leagues 2 seasons ago, when Villa got promoted to the WSL as Liverpool were getting relegated out of it and this was a no brainer of a game for me to go too.

For those coming to Liverpool FC Women’s games from further afield the easiest way I could find to get there on public transport was a train to Liverpool Lime Street then take a 5 minute walk to St. Thomas Street and get the 464 straight through the Mersey tunnels. On that bus you can’t miss the ground, it stops right outside but you do have to cross the road to get into the stadium. Word of caution if you’re going to a midweek game at Prenton Park though, the last bus back to Liverpool is at 6:50pm so it’s worth working out another back beforehand or you’ll be left scratching your head on how to do so after the game like I was. The only way back to the city at that time in the evening is to turn left from the ground and take the 25 minute walk down a straight road to Birkenhead Central station, the train to Lime street station takes 10 minutes from there and they run until 11:30pm.

When you get to the ground it feels really weirdly positioned near a busy crossroads in a sleepy village on the Wirral. The ground also look deeply unimpressive from the outside with the main thing you can see from the outside being red brick walls. It is more impressive when you get inside though. To get inside for Liverpool Women’s games at the ground you have to cross the road from the bus top and take Prenton Road West. You carry on down that side of the stadium, past the painted wall of football boots till you get to the Johnny King statue by the Mersey Clipper pub. Then you head down the path in between them and through the car park to the Kop turnstiles where you can actually get inside.
Due to the demand for tickets to the game they had only opened up one stand, so both home and the small contingent of away fans were all behind the goal at the Kop end of the stadium. This made the way the game ended unfathomable to me, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m not even in the stadium yet.

Getting into the stadium as it turned out would not be easy. I had headed to the game expecting to be able to pick up a ticket at either the ticket office or on the turnstiles as I have been able to at many grounds in the past. That’s not how it works here though as all tickets for Liverpool Women’s matches must be bought online.

It seems crazy to me that they do things this way when they need to be doing all they can to encourage people to come to Women’s games. One of the ways to encourage people to try new things is to make it easy for people to just turn up and try them out. This policy of not having tickets on sale at the ground clearly flies in the face of that and anything that makes it harder for people to come to Women’s football games should be changed when the goal of everyone in football should be to bring Women’s football up to the level of fan interest and engagement that the Men’s game enjoys.

The stewards and ground staff were extremely helpful in getting things sorted out though and after a few conversations in which I explained the situation and gave them my membership number, they were able to verify my membership and they let me into the ground. Actually that’s one thing I noticed about all the staff at Prenton Park for the game they were all incredibly helpful, enthusiastic and polite. The staff at the ground were the biggest advert for Women’s football I could ever hope to see.

Once inside it was clear that there would not be the normal football atmosphere for the match as the majority of the fans were families with young children and this made the ground feel far more relaxed than a football stadium normally does just before a match is about to kick off. It also made me stick out like a sore thumb as a white bloke in my mid-20’s, anywhere other than a football match the whole thing could’ve looked rather disturbing.

The last thing I want to talk about before I get into the actual match is the Liverpool mascot ‘Mighty Red’ who I saw out of the corner of my eye talking to some of the youngsters in the stands. He then came over to me, took my programme then opened it up and signed it. I have never had a mascot do anything like that at a game before, but I think more should.

The game itself was not the highest quality that Women’s football has to offer as both teams left some of their better players on the bench to make sure they were rested for their league games.
The quality was still impressive from the Ladies on the pitch though as both teams took to the task in hand with the attacking attitude that most football purists like to see. Neither teams were parking the bus, they were both having a go and trying to win the match.

Villa made their recent WSL experience count early on though as they were ahead after 2 minutes with a great counter-attacking goal. Liverpool had a corner at the far end of the pitch, but the ball broke loose and with just 3 passes Villa had it up the other end with Shania Hayles in the Liverpool box with just one defender and the keeper to beat. She cut inside after wrong footing the defender and slid the ball under the keeper’s despairing dive and into the back of the net. 1-0 to the Villa.

An error 6 minutes later almost had Liverpool level as the Villa keeper mis-controlled the ball in her area with a Liverpool attacker lurking nearby, but the keeper recovered just in time to clear the ball and prevent an embarrassing moment from wiping out Villa’s lead.
From that clearance Villa went straight up the other end where only some excellent last ditch defending by Liverpool’s Meikayla Moore prevented Villa’s Alisha Lehmann form scoring a second for Villa. This was almost ruined by the Liverpool keeper’s clearance which missed Lehmann by mere centimetres.

Villa bossed the majority of the first half and almost got a second goal just 11 minutes in. This time it was Gemma Davinson who latched on to a brilliant cross from the Villa right and it took the attentions of four Liverpool defenders to stop her getting the second goal that Villa’s play to that point absolutely deserved.

Villa’s first setback of the match came 18 minutes in when their captain Marisa Ewers had to be substituted with an injury, her replacement Remi Allen took the armband for the rest of the match.

Liverpool took advantage of this Villa setback to finally go on the attack themselves 2 minutes later when good work on the left by Georgia Walters ended up with the ball getting to the feet of Liverpool’s star player and local lass Missy-bo Kearns to have a shot from just outside the box. It flew agonisingly just wide of the post.

Liverpool managed to stay on top for the rest of the half and carved out 2 more guilt edged chances before the break. The first being an ambitious drive from 30 yards that the Villa keeper got positioned just right to keep out. The second came from a corner just after the ref had waved away the hosts claims for a penalty. A header from 6 yards out from the corner was somehow kept out by the visitors, but I couldn’t see quite how.

The first half ended 1-0 to Villa and the hosts manager Matt Beard had seen enough to make a triple change at the break.

Ten minutes into the second half Liverpool had established a foothold in the game and got in on their right through the excellent Melissa Lawley, unfortunately her cross hit the back of the head of a Liverpool player in the centre and bounced harmlessly away from goal.
Four minutes later though Liverpool were back on the attack and they got a corner that Missy-bo Kearns attempted to score directly from, unfortunately for her though the Villa keeper was on the ball and managed to get her fingertips too it to dig it out from under the crossbar and put it over the top.

However this was enough to convince Villa manager Carla Ward that now was the time for her to make a triple change. She took off both their goalscorer Hayles and their main playmaker Lehmann. With Villa leading and Liverpool in the ascendency perhaps the idea was to tighten up the defence and protect their lead. It didn’t work out.

Missy-bo Kearns had another incredible effort from distance this time that once again had the Villa keeper scrambling to make another brilliant fingertip save to keep Villa’s lead intact. Beard then made the substitutions that made all the difference, but which looked as strange as the Villa ones at the time. He substituted Missy-bo Kearns and Walters and replaced them with Liverpool’s record appearance maker Ashley Hodgson and the Woman who would make all the difference to the match Leanna Kiernan.

Those substitutions took place in the 63rd minute and by the 66th Kiernan had equalised. Her goal was a thing of beauty, she picked up the ball on the edge of the area, danced past 3 defenders then shaped to shoot across the goal before sliding it in at the near post. The skill and precision that were on show in the scoring of this goal were a pleasure to witness and I would be extremely surprised if a WSL club does not make an offer for her services in January. Unfortunately her spectacular cameo in this game lasted on 14 minutes before she had to be substituted with an injury. Liverpool will hope that she is not out for long as she showed she has the ability to turn games around and her presence in the team will be crucial to Liverpool’s promotion ambitions in the league.

Her goal and injury were the last major actions of the game, but the 4th official still managed to find 7 minutes of stoppages to add on at the end of the 90. Quite how 7 minutes was decided on I wouldn’t like to guess, but 7 it was.

At the end of those 7 many fans thought the game was over and the draw was the result, but this was a cup game so group stage or not there had to be a winner and in this tournament that winner was to be decided on penalties. This would have been an exciting way to end the game if not for the fact that it was decided that the penalties would not be taken in front of the only stand with fans in it, but would instead be taken at the other end of the ground as far away from the fans as possible. Why they chose to do things this way is anybody’s guess, but it seemed like an own goal to me not to involve the fans in this crucial moment in the match.

I have no idea who took any of the penalties, but I do know that Villa missed their first one and this proved to be decisive. Liverpool won the shootout 5-4 and in this way they won the match. It was a very strange ending to the match, but the right result to get the locals to return in the future and hopefully enough for them to tell others about the joys of Women’s football and in that way grow the fanbase for the Women’s game.