Week notes | October 9 2020

Inspired by a friend and former colleague Hera Hussein who’s tracking and sharing her week-to-week challenges, wins and thoughts, for both herself and others, I thought I’d try to do likewise (fully aware I’m unlikely to keep it up!)

What I did

• Paperwork. Aside from normal paperwork (match confirmations, referees, media, league officials, COVID declarations, coaches), this season we have to produce 4 new bits of COVID related paperwork for each game; 7 days ahead of the game, 5 days ahead, 48 hours ahead and on the day. That’s in addition to an email we need to send 14 days ahead of any away game to tell the team what colours we’d like to wear. As you can imagine there is a lot of crossover paperwork when you have 3 games in 8 days and we’re constantly looking ahead 2 weeks. This week we’ve played two games so far (a win away at London City Lionesses and a loss in the Conti Cup to Crystal Palace midweek) and we’re prepping for the game on Sunday at home to Blackburn. I’ve had to set up my own system for checking off just the official paperwork.

• Hosted an online player-parent evening for our U18s and Development Squad with a focus on playing overseas. Around half of our 1st team players have played overseas — from the US to Iceland to Scandinavia to France and beyond, often on full scholarships. I think playing overseas is a really great opportunity for female players (free education, opens horizons, grow in independence) and I’d be delighted for our pathway players to do that. Even though it’s not encouraged by the FA, I think that the on and off-pitch experience is invaluable and can only benefit the individual.
• Planned out some solid media work — we’ve tidied up our website page on the players, planned some videos for World Mental Health Day (out tomorrow) and also launched our Teammate of the Week at the request of the player. This isn’t about who scored the most goals, instead this is about who has best embodied the team values (togetherness, professionalism and inspiration)over the week. Check out the thread and winners this season so far.

• Live-streamed our game v Crystal Palace midweek. We think it’s an absolute no-brainer and we’re disappointed when the teams we play against don’t do it. We’re not allowed to have fans come to us, so we want to take us to the fans. We have a donations page on the landing page (www.lewesfc.com/live) and have been able to cover costs easily so far. Plus — we’re trying to support new and emerging talent get experience in commentary and presenting — this week we invited West Ham striker and Scotland International Martha Thomas to join commentator Ben Jacobs, and she did a fabulous job!
• Kept on top of potential COVID issues — aside from weekly testing which provides peace of mind, we’re monitoring symptoms every day. Grateful every time to have negative tests come back, especially if a player or staff member has a cough or a headache as was the case this week.
• Joined a board meeting for a thorough dissection of our draft Annual Accounts which are now with the auditors. We have to be so much tighter this season, so had a check-in with another Director on where we are sponsorship wise. We have such big plans, we just need the right partner!
• Had good calls with the fab Helen and Hannah at the Women’s Soccer show who are coming down for a day in the life of Lewes FC next week. So good to talk to them, so nice when journalists have done their research and prepped really well and are going to ask some very good questions!
• Welcomed Optus Sport to the Dripping Pan for the filming of their show on women’s football for their Australian audience. Nice to see Eesh Ferguson again — last time I saw her we were breaking Guinness World Records in Lyon ahead of the women’s world cup in France last year!
• Spoke with the National Football Museum about our brilliant new home and away kits and how it is that a tiny club like Lewes was able to get bespoke, special one-of-a-kind footie shirts this season (clue, Kappa agree that as a club we are special and one-of-a-kind!). More cool news regarding our kit soon…

• Joined a call prepping some advocacy work around getting rid of gambling adverts in football. More coming soon.

What I liked

• Just over a week ago, San Diego Loyal manager Landon Donovan backed his team as they walked off the pitch in protest after one of his player was the subject of homophobic slurs. This ended the team’s chances of winning the play-offs even though they were 3–0 up at the time. One thing that wasn’t picked up too much was that the opposition manager in a video is heard to say to Donovan “come on man, don’t make a big scene” which stank of the privilege enjoyed by those who are never subject to discrimination or harassment. I think there are plenty of people who wear the t-shirt or tweet the picture, but never truly understand, nor seek to understand discrimination.
• Women in Football’s nice rebrand — linked to the startling (but not surprising) fact that 66% of women in football have faced gender discrimination.
• The fan outrage around the fact that a number of big WSL clubs did not livestream their league cup games this week. People care. In my mind some clubs screwed up by not providing the opportunity to fans to watch and by scheduling the games in the middle of the day. There was some heavy-handedness from the FA in calling the journos in the grounds to stop filming seconds of footage, which backfired into more anger.
• One of our players came to me this week saying that she wanted to do something to support Breast Cancer Awareness week. I’m so pleased when players come forward to be proactive on issues, so we’ve now set up a fundraising page, the team warmed up in Breast Cancer UK t-shirts on Wednesday, we badged up the livestream with the logo and talked about the issues throughout the broadcast, and will continue to do all that for the rest of the month. Both the men’s and women’s teams are going to be taking part in a challenge to raise some funds. Please donate if you can!