Impetus editor Ben Gilby talks to Notts County Women manager Adam Dunleavy about the team’s incredible progress since they entered the league system for the 2018/19 after the heart-breaking loss of the original club.
The original Notts County Ladies side were created in 2014 after the Lincoln Ladies team formed some nineteen years previously were relocated across to Nottingham. That Lincoln side had achieved top flight status and had become the first women’s football team to play an entire season in a professional stadium, having been based at Sincil Bank. In 2017, Notts County were forced to pull out of the Women’s Super League Spring Series which bridged the sport’s transference from a summer season to one taking place from September to late spring. It was devastating, but out of the ashes a Magpie shaped phoenix has arisen.
In this period, Adam Dunleavy was working for the Notts County Football in the Community scheme and through mutual connections at the club, was asked to attend a meeting with the then owner Alan Hardy. He takes up the story. “I put my vision across to Alan to reform the women’s team and start again from the bottom of the English football pyramid. It was a couple of years early in the clubs plans but I was given the green light to go ahead in the May of 2018. I then set about bringing in a backroom team before we put the word out in the public domain with an open day at Meadow Lane. We then went through the process of affiliating to the league and FA as well as the trials for players which ran the span of the summer to the back end of July. The club already had a junior girls section from under tens up to under thirteens and so the framework was in place to have a sustainable academy for the future.”
Ahead to their return to the league system for the 2018/19 season, the club realised that stability was the watchword: “Being a completely new set up and knowing that our league had some established teams, our main aim was to make sure we were competitive. From there it was about laying a foundation on which to build and not rush the process. We had a rocky start with a couple of heavy defeats to the eventual league winners Northampton Town, which really welcomed us to the party. As we began to find our feet, we started to build consistency before setting a club record of unbeaten games, winning away at Northampton and beating Oadby at Meadow Lane in front of over 700 people. We went above and beyond any expectation set out to us at the beginning and I will be forever proud of the team of players and staff that made it possible,” Dunleavy reveals.
In putting Notts County’s female side back on the pitch, the coaching staff identified that the key to any hope of success was the environment provided for the players: “My assistant Adam Woolley and I believe steadfastly in creating an environment where players want to play. Where they feel part of something bigger and build a team mentality. Over the course of the season the team bonded and became a family. We know that every time they cross the white line, they are prepared to fight for each other and for us as a staff. As a club and a staff, you are only as good as the players at your disposal, and we got our recruitment right. With all of that falling into place, and the girls feeling like they had something to prove on our return to the women’s game, we fostered a perfect environment together that saw us exceed expectations across the board.”
A huge part of the success of the new Magpies side has come with the positive and multifaceted links between the women’s side and the men’s outfit as Dunleavy reveals: “We have seen brilliant support from the men’s side of the club over the last year, and we hope to continue to forge a relationship with the clubs’ new owners and explore ways in which we can work together. We use some of the facilities at Meadow Lane to train and have our own page in the Men’s matchday programme which helps us to keep fans in the loop about our season. Allied to this is a fantastic relationship with Notts County Football in the Community, who provide us with gym facilities and a classroom for sessions in the week. Linked closely to this, we will certainly be looking to play a couple of games at Meadow Lane again this season. The last fixture we played there was a fantastic success. We were incredibly proud of being able to give tickets to schools through our partnership with Football in the Community and get hundreds of school kids to the game to help showcase young women, playing at a professional sports stadium. Our biggest aim with playing at Meadow Lane is to help grow the profile of the women’s game locally and hopefully inspire more young girls into the game”
Dunleavy is more than aware that the he can’t rest on the laurels of last season’s successes: “Our main aim has to be to go one better than last season. We finished as runners up which is an incredible achievement for a team in its first year. Now we have set the foundations, we believe this group can achieve big things, be it this year or next. The key is to keep improving and to not stand still. As for the club, we want to continue to develop young payers to break into our senior section and provide the best possible environment for girls to grow with the club. We are lucky to have a wonderful team of coaches and volunteers who run the junior section, many of which are the unsung heroes of the club.”
He is also mindful that the club has benefitted by the significantly improved profile of the women’s game: “We have seen a massive increase in both interest and participation in the women’s game since the World Cup but it is probably traceable to the Olympics in 2012 when Team GB caught the nation’s attention and it has snowballed since then. The FA are committed to doubling participation which they are on course to achieve and fans are starting to come to more games across the country as the game grows. We currently have over 100 girls in our junior section. They play from our under nines team all the way up to the under sixteens which means that our pathway is now complete, and it won’t be long until we see the fruits of the homegrown players, breaking into the senior teams at the club.”
However, Dunleavy is clear that for County to enjoy sustainable success, it needs more than just an established player pathway and more supporters. “The key to success is to have a dedicated group of volunteers and staff that passionately believe in the women’s game. There is not yet, anywhere near the kind of money that the men’s game commands, so we must be more resourceful. We are incredibly lucky to have a lot of local businesses that support us through player sponsorship, as well as an anchor sponsor in Ramsay Healthcare that back us financially. It is also imperative that we continue to develop, grow and retain our players in the academy and make sure that we can provide elite players, capable of competing in the women’s leagues. With that in place, we can create a sustainable model that is futureproof and ambitious at the same time.”
Looking to the future, the Notts County manager is hugely positive, not just for women’s football as a whole, but also for his own club: “I believe that we will continue to see the rapid expansion and growth of the women’s game to heights we have not yet experienced. It is the fastest growing game in the world and with the increases in exposure to the general public that will only continue. We have the honour of seeing a major international women’s tournament hosted in England in the summer of 2021 and if the Lionesses can be in the mix at the end of the tournament and even win it, it will spur the media, corporations and ultimately fans to support the game. As for Notts County Women, I hope that we are able to see our team competing in the third tier of the Women’s game and feel that the National League is a realistic target in that time frame. From that point it will all come down to investment and support and if the appetite is there, my team and I have a structured and sensible plan on how to achieve promotion to the top two divisions. With the FA rules around payment of players and minimum hours, there would then need to further investment to see us reach that goal.”
Whilst Notts County women’s relationship with their men’s side is hugely positive at the present time, Dunleavy is aware that the there needs to be a degree of self-sufficiency for all women’s teams: “I think the fact that the infrastructure is in place with men’s teams and the commercial and publicity that comes with that affiliation makes it easier for Women’s teams to attract support. The end goal has to be for every EFL team to be supporting and inclusive of their women’s team. That being said, we all know how volatile and unpredictable football can be, with what has happened to Bury and Bolton Wanderers. I think that it is important for Women’s sections to welcome the support but also look to be financially self-sufficient to a point where they do not have to rely solely on the men’s side of the club. We have taken the approach this season to do exactly that and it puts us in a position where we know that we can provide the players with everything they need and make sure that we are on a stable financial footing for the years ahead. If all teams adopt that model, then hopefully the women’s game can continue to grow sustainably without the casualties that we see in the men’s equivalent.”
We thank Adam Dunleavy for his time and participation in this feature article. Notts County Women are presently top of the East Midlands Division One South with three wins from three. They play their home games at Ilkeston’s New Manor Ground, with aims of staging at least one game at Meadow Lane. Impetus will return to Notts County Women and will update readers on their progress as the season develops.
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