Ahead of our partner club Wroxham Women’s return to action this Sunday against Cambridge City Development, Ben Gilby spoke in depth to captain Jess Horn, vice-captain Grace Birchall and new signing Harriet Meers, who Impetus is proud to sponsor.

Wroxham Women, previously Acle United, have been one of the top clubs in the fifth tier Eastern Region Football League Premier for several seasons now. Whilst due to the pandemic, they must wait at least another year to achieve promotion to the FA Women’s National League, they have returned to training and are about to embark on a series of games between Sunday and the end of May.

Whilst Impetus readers may be familiar with the background of the club’s Harriet Meers (https://impetus885775742.wordpress.com/2021/01/21/harriet-meers-lots-to-look-forward-to-in-2021/) , who we are delighted to be sponsoring, this was our first opportunity to touch base with club captain Jess Horn and vice-captain Grace Birchall.

Therefore, we opened our conversation by going back to the very beginning of their footballing journeys.

“I’ve played football since I was able to walk!” laughs Jess Horn, “I have an older brother, Jack who always put me in goal to shoot against! I joined my first team when I was four or five in Brandon. I’d be playing games; friendlies, scoring goals, but the results didn’t mean anything. Everyone got a medal at the end of it, which me, with my inner-competitiveness hated because I wanted the results to stand and to be named the winner!”

“I was there until I was eleven or twelve and then moved over to Thetford Bulldogs and was there for a few years and started playing at the Suffolk Advanced Coaching Centre (ACC). I got into their under-16s a year early. I was playing for two teams, one on a Saturday, one on a Sunday in the Suffolk League and the Norfolk League. I then moved to West Ham United where I had the progression to play for their first team when they were still in the FA Women’s National League, but that was the year that they got their FA Women’s Super League licence and I was only sixteen. My old coach at West Ham took over at CK Basildon in the third tier. We didn’t win a game and got relegated. They changed their name to AFC Basildon, so I played there for a year under new management and was in and out of the first team and played some games for the Development side to get some minutes.”

“Things ended at Basildon towards the start of the first lockdown in March 2020. I knew Bex (Burton, Wroxham head coach) after having done a few training sessions there when the club were Acle United before I joined Basildon. I joined in the pre-season there for 2020/21 and have been at the club ever since.”

Grace’s early experiences were similar. “Yeah, like Jess I was kicking a ball as soon as I could walk. I don’t really remember a time when I wasn’t kicking a ball in the garden. I also had an older brother to contend with, so that’s always a challenge when you have someone older to prove yourself against as to who was the better footballer.”

“I started playing among the boys at primary school and many a game of two on one against my brother and my Dad in the garden. That quite often ended with an angry Grace! I got a lot out of it though, I definitely learned to lose a lot!”

“I first played for a local team called Red Rose. Whilst I was there, a few Dads who had come along to watch asked my Dad if I had tried out for Norwich City. He said that I hadn’t and they said I should because I was a good player. I tried out at Norwich City when I was eleven and I got in and I played for their Football in the Community (FITC) team. I guess it’s sort of like a girl’s academy side. I was there until I was sixteen.”

“At this stage you move on to women’s football. I played a couple of games for the first team but it didn’t really fit with how I wanted my life to go, so I decided to move in order to enjoy football rather than pursue football. I based that on my last year with the under-16s where we had an excellent coach, Darren Moss, and I had my best season. I was at the age when I thought ‘If I don’t get picked for England, then football is not for me’. I didn’t get picked for England, so I thought I needed to go on and find somewhere to enjoy the game.”

“I then looked around for local teams and went to Hethersett for a few years, which I absolutely loved. I’ve still got friends there and we played in the same league that Wroxham are now in. I then went to university in Sheffield and played for Rotherham United for a couple of years when I was up there.”

“Northern leagues are definitely a lot harder than our leagues! It was definitely a different style of football – a lot rougher and much better quality, so it certainly kept me on my toes.”

“After university I came back to Norfolk and had a bit of time away from football because I wasn’t coming back to a team and I didn’t know if I wanted to. I knew Bex (Burton, Wroxham head coach) through Norwich City before I first came to Acle United. At that point she was also a player as well as coach. I knew quite a few of the Acle girls and I thought that it was the place where I would start to enjoy football again. So, I joined and every year it has got better.”

“The transition with the club going from being Acle United to going to Wroxham has been excellent. The standard that we’ve now set ourselves is so much higher.”

Turning to Harriet Meers, Impetus last touched base with the defender who we sponsor in February. She updated us with what she has been up to since that last conversation:

“In some ways it’s been handy to have a bit of time out from football as I’ve had so much uni work. I’ve used the time though to increase the distances I’ve been running and then last week training finally came back and I feel kind of battered, to be honest! I had uni football training last Tuesday and Wroxham training last Wednesday. We just played games and stuff, but already my legs are all bruised up. I couldn’t walk down the stairs on Thursday morning. I did a half marathon and felt absolutely fine the next day, but I can’t do an hour of football, which is great!”

With Wroxham now back in training it has brought to an end a very difficult period of keeping in touch with each other online. From Jess’ perspective as club captain, that also had additional responsibilities from a pastoral perspective.

“It was hard because we have a big squad and you want to make sure everyone is OK. We tried to keep a discussion going in the main group and people were putting in the runs they were doing and fitness work, but others don’t necessarily like to praise themselves by showing what they had done, so we got a Wroxham Women Strava group going (a fitness social network) which meant we could see what everyone was doing.”

“We did lots of Zoom calls and quizzes in the January period which was nice, but they fizzled out because it went on for so long as we had them in the first lockdown and people began to get sick of them again. It’s nice to be back now though and actually see people’s faces in real life!”

With Grace at university completing a second degree, it has enabled some aspects of her life to continue to something approaching normal to some extent:

“I was on placement through January and February working from nine until five, but I’ve really missed my hobbies! I didn’t have that normal release in the evenings and weekends that we all had before. Trying to stay active has been the main thing for me. The Zoom calls were good. Jess mentioned the quizzes and I think it was good that it wasn’t just the coaches that organised them, it was actually some of the players sorting them out and running them. That made it fun. Having said that, it still didn’t compare to the first night back at training last Wednesday and seeing everyone face to face properly again and having a proper giggle.”

We then reflected how the experiences of the last twelve months had changed the players both as people and as footballers.

“I definitely appreciate things a lot more,” said Jess, “These periods we’ve had of lockdown have been the longest spells I’ve had without playing football since I was three years-old. I think I almost took having team-mates and a football family around me for granted. You don’t actually realise what a difference it makes seeing them every week.”

“Getting back to football last week really showed me how good it is for your mental health,” identified Harriet. “You think you’re fine doing all the running and solo fitness stuff, but when you’re back and involved with all the laughter and stuff, it was brilliant. It’s just so de-stressing. We didn’t really do much in terms of fitness and actual football, but the fact it was there from a social and psychological perspective was really good.”

“For me, it’s helped to me to appreciate what I’ve got and what we’ve got at Wroxham,” said Grace. “Coming back in to training could have seemed a scary thing as we haven’t been socialising in large groups. Yet we came back and it was as if we’d been training the whole time. Everyone just felt back into having a good time with each other – taking the piss out of each other and smashing the tackles in, Jess shoving me off the ball for example!”

Jess outlined what that first training session was like in terms of content: “It was more of a ‘let’s get everyone back together, it’s been rubbish for however long, let’s have some fun’. It was all about getting us to remember how much fun football is.”

“You know, there’s running fitness and there’s football fitness. Right now it’s the football fitness we need to concentrate on like changing direction and having Jess shove you in the back!” added Grace.

The club now return to action this Sunday. The Eastern Region Football League have put together a Champions League style competition with clubs divided into groups. Each side will play each other once with the top placed teams in each group progressing to the semi-finals.

“We have a group stage with Cambridge City Development, who we’ll play at home, Dunstable and Haringey Borough who we will both play away,” explained Jess, “Additionally, we will come into the Norfolk County Cup in early May at the Quarter-Final stage.”

With Harriet having signed for Wroxham just days before the December lockdown and now finally able to aim for selection for the squad for the first time, I wondered what her personal goals were between now and the end of May.

“The step up to Level Five football is a big one for me. I haven’t played Regional level football. I’m fairly confident off the ball but I want to work on my confidence on the ball, because I don’t want to be in a panic!”

“I want to learn about the other players and how they play around me, additionally.”

With Wroxham being linked to Bure Valley Youth FC as part of their player pathway development, the youngsters at that club have been speaking to Impetus about the importance of female role models and how the Wroxham Women fulfil this for them. Jess spoke about the importance of this.

“It’s been really hard because of Covid we’ve not been able to go down and see them or help them with training. They haven’t been able to come to our games this season as well. We love knowing they are there for us and we’re there for them and it will be great to be able to get that going again.”

Grace added: “Having a pathway and female role-models is just so important. When I was younger, my favourite player was Michael Owen as he was small, fast and could score goals and I wanted to identify with that.”

“I did have female players that I looked up to as well. My main one was Rachel Yankey. She came and played for England at Carrow Road, I think it was against Iceland (in March 2006). She was a winger and I was a winger at the time. I really liked watching her play and watching how she played. I was lucky enough to get her shirt after the game, so that really excelled my interest in looking up the women’s game and thinking that these were the players that were paving the way for us and that is important at any level.”

“Rachel Yankey was playing at the elite level and, obviously we’re not that at Wroxham, but we’re still paving a way for those girls at Bure Valley and that’s so important to know that there is somewhere to go for them to play.”

Harriet was also very clear about the importance of female footballing role models. “Unlike Jess and Grace, I didn’t have anyone around me in football and I didn’t start playing until I was fourteen or fifteen. If there were women footballers around me I would have become more aware a lot earlier. I got made to do ballet and stuff like that which definitely wasn’t for me!”

“I started coaching eighteen months to five year-old children before I even started playing, so even me kicking a football round with them, so the odd few girls that turned up to these groups and the boys would look up I think and make it less scary for them. It’s really important to have female role models in there as well.”

“It’s all well and good having a male coach with you, but when you have an actual female player coming along you can see where you can end up. I would definitely be a better player than I am now if I had started earlier.”

Harriet’s point about male coaches then sparked an exchange about why there were still far more males coaching in women’s football than women.

“I guess it’s probably because of a lack of promotion of women coaches when they themselves were younger,” suggested Jess, “In years to come, because there has been more promotion for it and people like us coming into the game, you will get more females coaching.”

“You’ve now got more females going into being pundits, like Alex Scott, for example,” Jess continued, “You are starting to see people moving into areas which were totally male dominated in sport and there is a lot of praise for her, which is really good for promoting women in football.”

“There’s also more schemes in place for women in football now,” Harriet highlighted, “At uni I did my Level One coaching in the first year and it was subsidised. Every year there are more subsidies for females to start coaching badges which means they might pay less than a guy would to do which is a great way to get them involved, even if it is just at the grassroots level.”

With Wroxham and previously, Acle United consistently challenging for promotion into the FA Women’s National League, I wondered what the players felt the team needed to do to ensure that Level Four status could finally be achieved and then maintained.

“Every year that I’ve been involved at the club, things have got better and better,” said Grace. “The recruitment that Bex and Richard Giles (team secretary) do gets better. As our profile rises further, more female footballers recognise our name and that brings more interest from higher level players, which is what we will need for promotion.”

“You can’t discredit the coaching that we get. I think we have the best coach in the League and I think Bex would be one of the best coaches in the League above (FA Women’s National League Division One London & South-East).”

“It’s all about finding that nice combination of bringing in the right players. It’s not about bringing in the best players, it’s bringing in the right players. You need to fit in with the team and be a team player, so finding that combination of training and improving plus bringing in talent to challenge.”

“Nobody should feel like their spot in the team is a given. They should feel like they have to take their spot every week. That’s the type of squad we need. Everyone has to be challenged. Once we have that, then we’ll really start to see where we can go.”

For Jess, the important thing to highlight was standards. “There is a big gap between our League and the National League immediately above us. We also need to think about bringing more fans in, for example and having those ticket payments because, at the end of the day, that is what funds the club. Having people buying a pint and some chips to watch us play and see Grace score however many goals…”

“The way we are going,” Jess continued, “We are getting interest from players because they are seeing how happy everyone is at the club, how much a family feel there is and how together we all are.”

“I came to the club at the start of Lockdown One in March 2020 and I was just doing the Zoom calls, I’d never seen anyone face to face until June which was when we were finally allowed to train non-contact and I felt like I’d been at the club for years. Everyone was so lovely and so welcoming. I’d never been in a team with such a nice bunch of girls. There were no groups, no secret jokes that other people didn’t get.”

“There’s never an awkward moment, it’s like a family, pretty much. You have to have that to progress to the next League because you cannot have a team of individuals – it doesn’t work.”

Harriet agreed: “I can vouch for that. When Bex first messaged me about coming along to the club, I was so nervous. I had never really trialled anywhere else. Going along, everyone was coming up to speak to me and then they messaged me after the session – it just felt so welcoming. Even if I get nervous before a session now, as soon as I get there it just goes because everyone is so friendly.”

We closed our discussion with the players making some aims for the next part of their careers.

“Ha! I’ll be so old in five years’ time!” laughed Grace. “I’d like us to get promoted because that’s what we’ve been pushing for the last however many years. I’d want to win a County Cup Final because that’s been a bit of a thorn in our side. We’ve lost finals and semi-finals and there’s been a lot of heartbreak involved in that. Being in the Final which has been held at Norwich City FC’s Carrow Road and bringing our modest fan base there with their big drums, singing their songs would be absolutely epic to make it and lift the trophy at Carrow Road.”

Jess sees some changes ahead in her career: “I want to go to uni to study to become a paramedic. That will take up quite a lot of my time. Obviously I still want to keep playing, but it will be interesting to see how I manage it. But, I want for us to get promoted and win trophies plus the awesome socials that we can have.”

Harriet emphasised the enjoyment aspect “Trophies are always a bonus! I just want to continue to enjoy the sport. That’s the most important thing for me. I don’t want to get to the stage where I am more stressed about football than enjoying it.”