As per Khaldoon's orders in the statement (anti-City alert):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... -City.html
There's a book by Pete Davis called 'I Lost My Heart to the Belles'. Read it if you love football. Not women's football, but football. Sport, even.
The novel is a labour of love about a labour of love. It follows the fortunes of a football team over the course of the 1994-95 season. The players just happen to be women, the Doncaster Belles.
Gill, Kaz, Nicky, Joanne, Tina, Channy and the rest swear like troopers and 'like a weekend out in Blackpool; they like lager'. They're certainly not saints. They don't pretend to be.
But their dedication to playing this game, despite the fact they're 'only women', is powerful and pervasive. The smell of pickled onion Monster Munch crisps in the changing rooms, the tears, the rain, the tackles, rubbish pitches, yet another crocked knee, the ill-fitting men's kit splattered with mud, legging it from work at Rotherham's Department of Social Security on a Friday afternoon. It makes you want to go out and smack a ball against the wall yourself - just because you can.
The Belles inspired a TV documentary and a series, Kay Mellor's 'Playing the Field'. They were the most famous name in women's football, way before 'Bend It Like Beckham' or the all-conquering Arsenal Ladies got their act together. They were, and are, an institution.
But earlier this year all that was obliterated. Following a 4-0 defeat by Chelsea in their first FA Women's Super League match of the season, Doncaster Rovers Belles, as they are now known, were told they would be relegated to the second tier of women's football at the start of the next campaign.
Manchester City look set to take their place with seven other teams in the restructured FA Women's Super League 1. Belles will play in Super League 2. Gill, Kaz, Nicky, Joanne, Tina, Channy, Monster Munch, six FA Cups, two League and Cup Doubles, five series of 'Playing the Field'. All gone.
Arsenal general manager Vic Akers, who founded the club's women's team in 1987, called it 'morally scandalous', adding: 'When we started, Donny were the premier women's team in the country. What's happening to them now is unjust. To relegate them after 90 minutes is a joke - it's kicking them out.
'If you're talking about relegation then you should also talk about promotion, and Manchester City didn't win the Premier League (the level below the WSL), they finished fourth.'
The FA casually dropped this bombshell on their website. Hey, this is women's football: nobody really cares. We can just do what we want.
No reasons have been given, other than the fact City fulfilled the organisation's criteria - based on finance, club structure, coaching set-up and playing standard - and the Belles did not.
Doncaster have been in decline since those glory days of the early 1990s, but make no mistake: this decision came down to cold, hard cash. City have it and the Belles do not. Never mind 44 years of history, we will simply buy our way into the top flight. The Belles, however, will not just go quietly. The club has appealed against the FA's decision and have been given until June 25 to 'fully prepare their case'.
To add further insult, however, the Women's FA Cup final between Arsenal and Bristol Academy was held at Doncaster Rovers' Keepmoat Stadium in May. The swathes of empty seats among the 5,000-strong crowd appeared to justify the FA's decision; suggesting there is no longer any appetite for women's football in this part of South Yorkshire.
The absence of advertising or promotion, though, was appalling, while Belles fans keen to use the BBC's live cameras to highlight their club's plight saw their banners and flags confiscated and had to fight to keep hold of their match tickets. A planned protest in the 22nd minute - to mark the Belles' 22 consecutive years in the top flight - therefore produced little more than a murmur.
The BBC's pre-match women's football magazine show glossed over the whole debacle with equal disregard. Sue Smith, who plays for the Belles and has won 93 England caps, could only manage an embarrassed laugh when put on the spot and asked to explain the decision. There was much shaking of heads, but a general acceptance that Doncaster simply do not have the cash to compete.
In the brave new plastic world of women's football, you see, people tend to be ever so grateful for any hand-out and so keep quiet about the less positive stuff. It is the same mentality that will allow Lincoln Ladies to rebrand into Notts County at the start of next season
Nottingham Forest Ladies, as you can imagine, are absolutely thrilled about that, but usually it's like having a herd of female Uriah Heep characters running the show, bowing their heads, eternally grateful for any crumbs of comfort that come their way.
Women's football does, of course, need a sound financial footing to continue moving forwards; to eventually become self-supporting and semi-professional. City will, no doubt, plough plenty of their considerable resources into their new ladies' team. But this must not be at the loss of the what makes this game appealing to so many women and girls.
Women's football is not a billionaire's plaything. You cannot just bulldoze the foundations of the club that have helped build the platform for today's female footballers, some of whom are Olympians and earn an annual wage for playing the sport they love. You cannot just rip the heart out of a game to justify the ugliest of phrases in sport: 'a new franchise'. That is not progress - it's going backwards.
The closing line of 'I Lost My Heart to the Belles' is a telling one. 'Anybody listening?' it asks. The answer, nearly 20 years on, still appears to be 'no'.
The mancityfans.net football forum
The BEST FORUM in all the land and all the world
