Welcome to FA Cup fever: women's football style

Crawley Wasps Ladies vs Arsenal Women in the FA Cup
Minnows Crawley Wasps were beaten by Arsenal in the FA Cup this weekend Credit: Phil Westlake/News Images

Crawley Wasps defender Charlotte Young was twenty minutes late to her staff briefing at Thomas Bennett Community College. She and her colleagues had been clustered around a computer in the staff room, where they were “just screaming, screaming for around five minutes”.

They had been listening to the radio stream of the Women’s FA Cup fourth-round draw, when Charlotte’s Wasps - top of the fourth tier's South East region - were handed a home tie against Arsenal, 14-times winners and then comfortably top of the Women’s Super League. Young’s absence was forgotten entirely when, two weeks later, she took the Women’s FA Cup into school. Welcome to FA Cup fever: women's football style.

Wasps’ manager and chairman Paul Walker described Arsenal’s visit as “the biggest day in the club’s history”, as a club run entirely by volunteers revelled in reaching the competition’s last 32. They have won 19 of their 22 games this season, but at a time when the prize money on offer in this competition is under fresh scrutiny their only financial aim was to break even.

“Our priority’s not been making money from today,” Walker said. “Crawley Town offered to stage our game but the girls were very clear that they wanted to bring Arsenal here. We wanted to make it a real occasion, to put on an event.”

In the end, Crawley Town played host to the weekend’s other standout tie, Brighton vs Manchester United, as a town probably best-known for being the hometown of the gothic-rock band the Cure adjusted to its brief cameo at the epicentre of women’s football.

Wasps expect to be a Super League side in time but currently Crawley’s three most notable contributions to football history read as follows: a 1-0 defeat to Manchester United in this competition at Old Trafford in February 2011, when Steve Evans’ side - then just a Football League team in waiting - were thwarted by a Wes Brown header. Beyond that, Crawley is the birthplace of Gareth Southgate, and Crawley Town are the joint record holders for the most red cards in a single English match: five, all after the final whistle, in a League Two game against Bradford in 2012, after a brawl that ended with shinpads sailing through the air was diffused by current Newport boss Michael Flynn.

Sunday’s events represented new ground for the women’s game as its adjusts its definition of FA Cup fever. The staples of the FA Cup fourth-round in the men’s game - plumbers, hairdressers and police officers getting their moments in the sun - feel incongruous here given most female footballers have two jobs. Claire Rafferty is a full-time professional at West Ham but still works at a bank.

Nearly all of the second-tier of women’s football are part-time - Spurs’ Ashley Neville, for instance, is a full-time teacher. The Women’s Super League only became a fully-professional division in 2017. The 33-places between Crawley and Arsenal are not as cavernous as they might first seem.

Still, there is a gulf. You can sign up to play for Crawley Wasps via email - newplayer@crawleywasps.com, for those interested - and the players, unpaid, train just once a week. Walker and his assistant manager helped to clear snow from the pitch over the weekend, and their determination to make sure the game went ahead is commendable considering half of the fourth-round games are still to be played following postponements. Arsenal’s visit predictably swelled attendances, to the point the players’ parents donned bibs to act as stewards and the club’s assistant manager suggested they hire a new stand for the game. I didn’t know you could hire a stand, I say. “You can,” Walker says. “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

“I was very surprised,” said Emily Perry, the parent who turned stand-in operations manager for Arsenal’s visit. “It pops up really quickly and then folds back down so they can put it in a van back to Leicester."

Arsenal run out comfortable 4-0 winners, but are, in truth, flattered by the scoreline. After Kim Little’s opener the day belongs to Ruby Grant, who, after barrelling a shot into the top corner with an artful swivel, records her hat-trick by the 87th minute.

Most of the club-record crowd of 1,550 pack into the clubhouse after the game, where Wasps are humbled when Arsenal present them with a signed shirt. The Crawley Town boss, Gabriele Cioffi, is in attendance, and speaks in Italian with Arsenal head coach Joe Montemurro.

“He’s Italian, I’m of Italian descent, so we exchanged numbers and we’re probably going to meet up for a coffee or a pizza,” Montemurro says. “This was an amazing experience and I think it brings to life the realities of football, why we play the game. You realise the amount of people and volunteers at grassroots doing an amazing job, and it humbles us. It brings us back to earth.”

Arsenal’s 21-year-old defender Leah Williamson is part of the generation of women's footballers who have only ever known professional status, but was equally moved.

“We’ve got quite a lot of foreign girls in our team, and I think it will be nice for them to see that this is football, English football, down to the very roots," she said. "Everybody chipped in to make sure their pitch is ready.  I saw the tweets that the club put out last night, asking people to chip in with tarpaulin and stuff like that [to cover the pitch]. It’s definitely humbling. You see what football means, what makes the game great. All these people turned up because it’s a community club.

“I think we all know how lucky we are to be professional footballers, but I think this has been like the men’s fixtures, in terms of the magic of the FA Cup. You’ve got a team that’s fully professional, and then all of these girls all have jobs, work really hard during the daytime and come to play at the weekend because they love it. That’s what women’s football’s always been about. We don’t play for outrageous amounts of money - we play because we love it.”

License this content