Players sit by the pitch, pulling on boots, tucking in shin pads, laughing and grumbling and gossiping. Lee Sanders attempts to establish some order. “We start in three minutes. Get yourselves sorted,” the manager says. Around the perimeter, students complete shuttles on a running track. A discordant soundtrack booms from a first-floor window, the ritual chanting of martial art practice. “You get used to it,” someone says.
A few minutes earlier, Sanders had looked around the clutter of his office and said “everything happens here,” which is not much of an exaggeration. Alongside the laptops on which sessions are planned, opposing teams are scouted and travel is booked, there are boxes of kit and bibs and studs. In the corner of the room, there is a number printer; getting the shirts ready is a task which falls to Sanders, too.
It is a North East weeknight and Durham Women FC are training. None of this existed 12 years ago. Sanders was self-employed back then, football was “watching Super Sunday on the television and supporting Newcastle United,” but Brooke, his young daughter, had wanted to play and there wasn’t a team for her and, well, one thing led to another and here they are, in the same division as Manchester United.
Theirs, says Sanders, 46, “is a rags to riches story,” and they are still a combination of nothing and everything, underpinned by obsession. The merger between South Durham & Cestria Girls, his club, and Durham University took them into the FA Women’s Super League 2 in 2014 and gave them access to first-class facilities, but their budget is small. They are the only club in the top two divisions who do not have an association with a men’s side.
“We started with a Grow the Game grant from the FA,” Sanders says. “We had nothing. We met in a coffee shop and put the club together. We were playing on a field at High Handenhold near Beamish and then we played out of Langley Park Social for a little while. We played all over; wherever we could rent a pitch. We didn’t have anything. We didn’t have an identity, we didn’t have a home.
Advertisement
“There’s a picture of seven or eight of our girls in a team pose outside a shop called Teeny Totz, which sold dollshouses in Chester-le-Street. They were our first sponsors. I always go back to that image and think, ‘Well, this has grown from that.’”
The search for regular 11-a-side football took them to the West Riding League in Leeds, “a massive commitment in terms of traveling every week,” Sanders says. Then they played in Lancashire. After that came senior football. “We won that league in our first year,” Sanders says. “At that point, the Super League were opening applications to more teams. And to a lot of people’s amusement and amazement initially, I said, ‘Yeah, let’s have a go.’”
Durham compete as equals in the Women’s Championship, alongside Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City, Crystal Palace and the newly-formed United. They are still up against it. Geography means their nearest league match is against Sheffield United, so every away game means a night in a hotel, another drain on money and time. “Some of the big teams travel in luxury coaches,” Sanders says. “We take nine-seater mini-vans. And then we play them off the park...”
Dawn Hepple, the club secretary, has been with Sanders from the start, as has Beth, her daughter, a player back then and still a first-teamer now. “Everybody wrote us off when we came into the league,” Dawn says. “To be a well-run, sustainable club at this level, going to a play Man United in a couple of weeks, with all the bells and whistles they’ve got, that’s probably what I’m most proud of.”
“The last ten years have been amazing,” says Beth, a midfield player. “It’s mad really.”
Advertisement
“I can’t believe it,” says Zoe Ness, another Cestria veteran (these things are relative; Ness and Hepple are 22). “If you’d said to us when we were younger this is where you’re going to be, I’d have said, ‘No, not going to happen.’ We’re competing with some big names. On and off the field, there’s only one thing we’re coming second to and that’s budgets. We’re doing a lot of things right.”
As Sanders says, “I don’t have anybody coming in at the start of the season saying ‘here’s a pot of cash’ and we can’t just turn around and say ‘can we have more please’ because it doesn’t exist. We’re just clever with it. You cut your cloth to suit, don’t you? The players are well looked after, we stay in decent hotels, but at the same time they’re either students or they work and this is their passion. This is why they do it.
“We’re an honest, working club. It’s not sugar-coated in any way, it’s not made up to be something that it’s not. When we talk to players we’re honest about what we’ve got, what we can give and can’t give, but about what we can achieve, too. Everyone really works hard, across the board. If you look at Dawn, she works for the NHS, and then comes here until 10pm at night. That’s what drives the club.”
“Sometimes we get tired and we get sick, don’t we? And at those points you have to stop and think...” Dawn begins.
“When we’re playing Reading away on a Sunday and you’ve got to be at work at 7am on Monday and you’re still driving at 11pm...” Mark Donnelly, the marketing officer, says.
Advertisement
“When things get a bit frantic or you’re struggling a little bit, you have to remember everything that’s gone on from the beginning to where we are now,” Sanders says. “I like to think we’ve done it the right way, with a lot of integrity. I’m just really proud of it.”
In their first year in the Women’s Super League, Dawn drove 110,000 miles in her own car on club business, so Sanders went to a local garage to talk about sponsorship, possibly for a hire car. They did not bite; not for a women’s team. Attitudes are changing. The University tie-in means Durham can offer a “unique postgraduate scholarship scheme, so you’ve got girls who are getting a masters degree,” says Sanders. “In itself, that’s worth a lot.”
The same applies to the gym they use, the 4G training pitch, a partnership with New College, which allows them to use heart and GPS monitors. The lack of a men’s team “gives us an air of freedom,” Sanders says. “We’re not governed by the brand, if that makes sense. When it comes to building partnerships or sponsorships, we can go out and do what we want. Which is an advantage over some of the women’s teams.”
Their circumstances can only foster unity, a togetherness. “We don’t have the big bank account with neverending pots of money, but we make best use of what we do have,” Sarah Wilson, the Durham captain, says. “And you get a real family feel from the club. That’s the road we go down. It’s welcome and friendly, as well as being professional at the same time. We’re here because we’ve worked hard to get here.”
Wilson, the centre-half, is an NVQ tutor. “I work full-time, but in the women’s game there’s a lot of people who do that, so it’s not just us. It’s dedication. You see these girls more than you see your own family and friends. We always laugh about it. It’s a huge commitment on top of the job, but we get incredible support from work, everybody is understanding. There’s a special vibe around the club. I love it.”
Advertisement
On Sunday, Durham are at home to Palace at New Ferens Park, the ground they rent. They have designs on more than this. “Everybody wants to be here, to work hard,” says Robson. “We’ve all got the same vision, the same goals. We want to finish as high as we can in the league this year and really push for it. There’s no reason why we can’t.” They have made their mark. “As far as women’s football is concerned we’re one of the biggest clubs in the country,” says Sanders.