That the news generated barely a ripple — 17 retweets and 32 likes — suggests that this is nothing extraordinary for women’s football. Yet the story of a third-tier team willingly foregoing their own promotion to the Championship would be staggering news in the men’s game. To do so because they would not be able to find the £140,000 needed to compete would render it even more shocking.
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This is why Huddersfield Town Women, three points clear at the top of the National League Northern Premier Division, a regional women’s equivalent of League One, made the call a month ago to pull themselves out of the running. In the grander scheme of things, it might not matter — The Athletic understands that the Women’s National League, football’s greatest victim of the government’s mapping of non-elite sport, is tending towards its second null-and-void decision in as many seasons — but it is a curious and eye-catching intervention nonetheless.
Should it be? In this arena, little about Huddersfield’s decision is new. They are, like many lower-league women’s clubs, a self-funded, separate entity from Huddersfield Town’s men’s side. Both parties have met, but “even with the generosity of the men’s side, we still couldn’t fulfil what we would need to,” says Jordan Wimpenny, Huddersfield Women’s manager. “The decision was made realistically for the club’s financial stability.”
The advent of professionalism in women’s football has meant that financial precarity so often trumps convention and ambition. Sunderland, seventh in the top tier in 2017-18, are now in the third tier, having failed to meet the licensing demands for the Women’s Super League (WSL) or Championship.
The reverse pattern holds, too: West Ham, Manchester United and Manchester City, at various points, have all had their path up the pyramid accelerated by the cash injections that have enabled them to compete in the WSL. In City’s case, they were only inducted into the top tier, in 2013, at the expense of Doncaster Belles. And the leagues are structured to reflect these curious financial nuances: if Huddersfield were to be unsuccessful in their licence application, the opportunity would go to the second-placed team.
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Huddersfield’s statement is heavy with the sense of deja vu, wearing the same stripes as so many women’s teams that have come before them. There is a tinge of irony to the fact a mid-table side for the last several years have put together a promotion run in this of all seasons. “We didn’t want to make an application if we can’t sustain a credible campaign in the Championship,” it concluded. “We only want the best for the players and understand that fans will also be disappointed by this decision, but it’s for the best and we hope everyone will see that.“
The plan, from the outset, had been to go for promotion. The licence criteria were handed to them in December, with a deadline of the end of January. By anyone’s standards, it is a short window. David Mallin, the club’s chairman and owner of a textiles business, currently runs the first team at a cost of £20,000 a season. He estimated that promotion would cost them £140,000 a season. He claims that the average playing budget in the Championship is “something like £80,000. It’s just too much money”.
He spoke to a chairman of a Championship club affiliated with a men’s Premier League side and learned that their budget was £400,000. For Town, the increase in away travel — they would be moving from a solely northern division to one with, currently, four London clubs and five overnight stays — would cost them £2,500 per game in transport, hotel and food costs. Even just paying players travel expenses, he says, would work out at £50,000 a season. “I just realised that this season, with everything that’s going on, it just wasn’t worth making the application,” Mallin says. “I didn’t fancy going into the Championship just to lose a lot of money. In the WSL, West Ham are bottom and they’re owned by a billionaire. What hope is there for anybody?”
Promotion would necessitate a new ground to meet a new capacity — Town had looked at alternative venues and discussed playing at the men’s John Smith’s Stadium — and paying player wages for the first time. “I didn’t really want to just pay a few players and not pay the others,” Mallin continued. “If we’re going to pay them, we should pay them all the same. If you suddenly get a superstar coming in on £300 a week, I think it would ruin the ethos of the club, the balance of the team. I don’t think it’s worth busting the club just to get promotion.”
COVID-19, of course, has been a decisive factor. Put simply, now is not the prime time to find sponsorship. “It was difficult at this time for anybody to fully commit,” Wimpenny continues, “when you’ve got organisations and businesses that don’t fully know where they stand at the moment. Everything has just been put on hold. They’ve got to make decisions based on their own stability before they start committing externally.”
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Amid the global uncertainty, Town will try again next year, and over the summer will look at strengthening their relationship with the men’s arm. They train at the men’s Canalside Sports Complex: there were talks, before the first lockdown, of building a stand for Town Women there. The men’s side offered to make a financial contribution to aid the women’s application to the Championship, but “for them to commit what we were asking at that point, with the COVID situation, wasn’t feasible for both parties”, says Wimpenny. “We’re going to sit down again in the summer and review where we’re at in terms of a joint partnership, see if we can come up with something that will put us in a better position for next time we come through to the application.”
A collaboration would be a significant step given a number of lower-division women’s sides — including Burnley and Leicester — are now commanding improved financial support from Premier League clubs. Increasingly, women’s sides not bankrolled by rich men’s sides will find it harder to compete. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that men’s Football League clubs have been without the bulk of their gate receipts for six months.
“You can’t expect Huddersfield Town to roll over and throw a lot of money at us,” Mallin says. “There’s no blame attached to them at all. When they were up in the Premier League, they started to give us more support. They’re helping us in lots of ways without handing money over. But I don’t think many clubs can go up to the Championship without the support of a men’s club. It’s a very tough thing to do on your own. Too many teams have come back down with a tail between the legs.”
For now, Town have the challenge of keeping hold of players who are, by their chairman’s own admission, “frustrated”. Some are happy in tier three, others are coming towards the end of their playing days and are reluctant to pass up the chance to reach the second division. Many are young and hungry, with ambitions to climb the league ladder.
“To not be rewarded with promotion is frustrating for them,” says Wimpenny. “But we can’t change the outcome. I can understand their frustrations if they want to go and play in the Championship. I’ve not had inkling for many of them to say that they are going to leave but people will have choices to make when it comes to the end of the season.”
(Photo: John Early/Getty Images)